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Private Mark Hitchcock was getting tired of crawling on his stomach. The Rat Patrol was advancing very slowly and carefully through an open area around a munitions depot. Troy had presumed, quite reasonably, that the area around the depot would be mined; hence, they were inching along with Troy in the lead, carefully sweeping the ground ahead of them with a long stick. Either Troy was phenomenally lucky or this part of the field wasn't mined, because so far they hadn't encountered anything.
Hitch was right behind Troy. Indeed, he always stuck close to his sergeant. People noticed Hitch's loyalty and applauded his courage as he followed Troy--to be precise, chauffered him--into the most insanely dangerous situations. But Hitch didn't see it as loyalty or courage: it was sheer hardheaded Yankee practicality. Troy had a quality that distinguished him from most of the commandos Hitch had ever known: he was still alive. Hitch figured the safest place to be was right next to Troy.
As he crawled along, Hitch found himself thinking about the other members of the Rat Patrol. Moffitt was different from Troy. Troy was smart; Moffitt was intelligent. He had a Ph.D. and spoke somewhere around fifteen languages, including dead ones like Latin, Coptic, and correct English.
Hitch regarded Troy with wary admiration and bore Moffitt with a great deal of patience, but Tully he just plain liked. Troy liked to talk about strategy and Moffitt liked to talk about anything ending in -ology, but Tully liked to talk about important stuff. Like girls. Better yet, Tully liked to listen, which was important to someone like Hitch.
Suddenly Troy came to a stop. The others followed suit. Troy twisted around and addressed them in a loud whisper. "I don't like it," he hissed. "I'm willing to bet this field isn't mined at all."
"That's just what Dietrich would want us to think," said Moffitt. "The mines must be laid out in some devilishly clever pattern to lead one into their midst and instill false confidence. We'll have to be doubly careful from now on."
"Why?" asked Hitch.
"Because," said Moffitt thoughtfully, "they're probably designed to increase right at the psychological moment that the enemy decides there are none and lets up his guard. In other words, right about now."
Hitch groaned. Tully made a sympathetic noise. Troy turned back around and the slow procession continued.
Hitch felt a particularly sharp-edged rock scrape across his tummy. Great, he thought. Now I can mash in some dirt and sand and get an infection, assuming a mine doesn't blow me up first.
Finally they reached the end of the open field. A barbed-wire fence was in front of them. There was a gate in the fence not far from their position. Tully inspected the latch that locked the fence. "We could be through this in a minute, Sarge," he said, pulling out a pair of wire clippers.
"No," whispered Troy. "It's too easy." He studied the fence carefully. "There's gotta be a catch."
"Do you think it's electrified?" whispered Moffitt.
"Not sure," said Troy. "It might be wired so that opening the gate will trigger a silent alarm in the guard station."
Moffitt nodded seriously. "The same could be true if we broke a circuit by cutting a hole in the fence itself. They could be upon us as soon as we got in."
"I think we'll be safer climbing over the fence," said Troy.
Tully stuck his wire clippers back in his pocket. Hitch was not as quickly resigned to the situation. "But Sarge! There's barbed wire strung along the top!"
"This is a commando raid, Hitch, not a Sunday-school picnic!" Troy barked in a whisper. "You'll have to expect a few scratches!"
Hitch looked properly subservient. As soon as Troy's back was turned, he stuck his tongue out. Tully winked.
"Now," said Troy once they were finally on the ground. "We're looking for the main storage area."
"Most likely a building marked Hauptmunitionslagerhaus," Moffitt added helpfully.
"That's easy for you to say," muttered Tully.
"Surely it won't be that simple," said Troy thoughtfully. "D'you think Dietrich would put up signs directing us to our target? Surely the one building they won't be in will be the one marked uh, um... what you said."
"So we have to find that building, and then search every other building?" Hitch asked.
"Don't whine," whispered Tully in Hitch's ear. "It'll only encourage them."
"We'll split up," decided Troy. "Hitch, you're with me."
Hitch followed Troy around one side of the encampment. The buildings and tents didn't seem particularly well-guarded, but the two commandos moved with utmost care nonetheless, skulking silently through the deep shadows.
"I'll watch," Troy said softly as they came to the first structure. "See if you can poke your head in."
Hitch moved the tent flap ever-so-slightly and peered inside. Half-a-dozen sleeping soldiers snored within, oblivious to his presence. He closed the flap. "This ain't the one, Sarge."
They proceeded in this manner, trading off the jobs of standing guard and peeking inside, throughout their chosen half of the camp. Finally they found themselves in front of a central building with a large placard that read "Hauptmunitionslagerhaus."
Troy held up a hand as they approached the front of the structure. "Do you hear something?"
Hitch listened carefully. "Someone's here," he said. They crept to the corner of the building and peeked carefully around, weapons at the ready.
"Hände hoch!" said an authoritative voice behind them. They whirled, raising their hands. Two figures stood in the shadows, weapons trained on the Americans. The taller of the two jerked his weapon slightly, indicating that the two should put down their guns.
Something about the way their captor moved was familiar. Hitch squinted. "Aw, Sarge," he said. "It's Moffitt and Tully."
"Izzat you, Sarge?" asked Tully.
"It could be a trick, Tully," Moffitt cautioned.
"No trick," said Troy. "It's us." The four stood and looked at each other for a beat, then put away their weapons and moved together to form a group.
"Close call," said Moffitt with a relieved grin.
"No kidding," said Troy. "So, you find anything?"
Moffitt shook his head. "Not so much as a bullet."
"Did you look in this building?" asked Hitch.
"Well, no," Moffitt said. "Did you?"
"No," admitted Troy. "We had ruled it out. I suppose we'd better check it just in case."
While they were talking, Tully was peering in the window. "Hey, Sarge, it's full of boxes. Looks like weapons."
Hitch came up next to Tully and pointed over his shoulder to an open box of grenades. "It's the goods, all right."
Moffitt shook his head in admiration. "A double-blind. Dietrich knew we would have figured that he wouldn't put the munitions in the building marked 'munitions,' so he knew we wouldn't look there. So that's where he put them."
"Amazing," said Troy. "We're lucky the jerries don't have more men like him."
Hitch pointed to the two sergeants and whispered to Tully, "We're lucky the Allies don't have too many like those two." Tully punched his shoulder lightly. Hitch spoke aloud. "What are we waiting for? If the stuff is in this building, let's go in and set the charges!"
"There must be some final obstacle," said Moffitt.
Troy nodded. "Dietrich wouldn't make it easy for us." The two sergeants stared at the building, trying to outthink their nemesis.
Hitch sighed. Tully whispered, "We should have brought a deck of cards."
"Geese," said Moffitt suddenly.
"Geese?" asked Troy.
"Geese," Moffitt repeated with certainty. "They make indefatigable and unbribable watch animals. They are highly territorial, surprisingly vicious, and most important, very loud. Much better than dogs. The Romans used them to guard their estates, including their outposts in ancient Germany."
Troy gave a decisive nod. "Then Dietrich would know about them. That building is probably full of geese, then. How do we get past them?"
"We don't," said Moffitt. "If there are geese in there, we'll never be able to sneak past them."
Hitch could keep still no longer. "What if there aren't any geese?" he burst out. "No dogs, no geese, no attack-trained killer gerbils."
Troy looked at Moffitt. Moffitt looked at Troy. They both looked at Hitch.
It was Tully who spoke. "Seems to me like it don't matter," he said. "We have to do the mission anyway, geese or no geese. We'll just have to take our chances."
"My God," said Troy. "That's got to be a record," he said.
Moffitt agreed. "Three sentences in a row. Mirabile dictu."
"Besides which, he's right," Troy added. "Whatever's in there, we're going in. We'll have to set the timers and get out of there before the whole camp is alerted."
"You're gonna blow up the geese along with the munitions?" Hitch asked. "Isn't that against the Geneva Convention?"
Tully smacked his lips. "There's good eatin' on a goose."
Troy made an impatient gesture. "Get the explosives ready."
They climbed in through the windows, although the front door was unlocked. Hitch had given up protesting by this point. "No geese, Sarge," he whispered. "Not so much as a gosling."
Moffitt stood in the middle of the main room, hands on hips, looking around. "I don't understand," he said.
"I don't either," said Troy. "But I'm not looking a gift horse in the mouth. Set the charges, and let's get out of here."
A few minutes later, Hitch stood up and said, "That's the last one, Sarge."
"Let's shake it," said Troy. They left through the front door, slipped back across the compound, cut open the gate, and ran through the unmined terrain outside. The timers were set for seven minutes; the Rats were back in their jeeps and on the road before the first explosions went off.
They stopped at a safe distance to watch the flames that reached hungrily toward the night sky. "I've got it," said Moffitt suddenly. "The munitions were defective. Dietrich wanted us to blow them up so that he could requisition more."
"That works," said Troy.
A deafening roar shattered the night air as the fire dissolved the storage boxes. Grenades and mortars and bombs and magazines added their firepower to the conflagration. "Well, it was a good theory while it lasted," Moffitt said with a shrug.
"We'll leave it as a mystery," said Troy. "Let's head out before they get the bright idea of coming to look for us." The noise of the jeep engines was drowned out by the explosions behind them as the Rat Patrol glided back into the desert.
Hans Dietrich lolled lazily in his chair. A tall glass filled with fruit juices, rum, and a paper umbrella sat on the table beside him, and a beautiful view of the seacoast stretched in front of him. I hate to admit it, he thought, but I did need this vacation. Wonder how the Rat Patrol are getting along without me?
