The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger Read Online Free PDF Page A

watched, the music stopped abruptly and the girl disappeared through a curtained doorway at the back of the room. There was no applause although several of the soldiers shouted after the girl. Then they began to move back down toward the front of the tavern, not sitting at the tables but crowding toward the doorway. Troy and Tully withdrew into their comer.
    There was the clang of a cymbal and the men still seated pushed back their chairs, rose muttering among themselves and drifting out with the others.
    "Curfew," Troy whispered.
    "That go for us Ay-rabs, too?" Tully asked.
    "I don't know," Troy said tightly. "One thing for sure, it's going to make us conspicuous."
    Troy looked back at the doorway, suddenly and decisively knocked back his chair and stood.
    "I'm going to take a chance on that girl," he said and walked rapidly toward the curtained doorway at the rear.
    "Won't you never learn, Sarge?" Tully moaned at his shoulder.
    "When we go through the curtain take a quick look behind you," Troy said stepping into a dismal passageway.
    Standing in the doorway at the front observing them closely was the Afrika Korps officer in the peaked cap.

3
     
    Moffitt and Hitchcrouched motionless and hidden by the enveloping night in the sand beyond the double rows of tanks and armored cars that faced into the desert outside the walls of Sidi Abd. At the entrance to the town, the acetylene lantern was a bright blob of light in which hulked the outline of the guard. The light scantily touched only the hoods of the first two halftracks and the corridor between the vehicles became a tunnel to the opaque oblivion of black at the far end where Moffitt and Hitch lurked. A few acetylene lanterns burned within the tents that stood in taut ranks behind the vehicles on either side, but most of the shelters were dark. There was a tenacious impenetrability to the night. It was as if the clouded desert sky was an inky-colored sponge that sucked in and absorbed whatever light was spilled by wasteful man.
    Although the sand still was warm from the diffused heat of the gray day, the night was cold and there was a faintly dank smell that seemed to warn of rain riding above the fat-sodden, slow-crawling cooking odors. Sergeant and private, Briton and Ivy Leaguer, scholar and school dropout, Moffitt and Hitch huddled in their dark robes and patiently observed the movements of the sentries about the Jerry armor. The patrols of each of the four guards had been carefully planned so that at all times there was one man, front or back, at each end of the double rows of vehicles.
    "A bit sticky, wouldn't you say?" Moffitt said softly, reaching beneath his robe to touch the two packages of plastic explosives at his belt. "We can't just walk in as Troy and Tully did, plant our charges and say 'ta-ta.'" 
    "One of those guards will goof off sooner or later," Hitch whispered confidently. "One of them's going to want a smoke or have to go to the can. You'll see." 
    "We have only all night," Moffitt said. It was true; it probably would drag for Hitch and him but he hoped there would be hours enough in it for Troy and Tully. "Do you have any preference in the vehicle we appropriate for our flight?"
    "Sure," Hitch said promptly. He pulled the wad of gum from behind his ear and pushed it in his mouth. "Don't worry about the gum, Doc, I'll get rid of it when we move. About the cars, I'd prefer a scout car but I haven't seen one. They must have them somewhere else in a motor pool. I figure we take the halftrack closest to the wall and bust out in it."
    "Why not the last one in the line, the one farthest out in the desert?" Moffitt chided.
    "Doc," Hitch said and he sounded annoyed. "You know as well as I do, they'd run us down before we got to it. We've got to get out ahead of them and run away fast." 
    "Good lad," Moffitt said approvingly. "Where do you think we ought to drop our packages?"
    "Aw, you're just making conversation," Hitch said. "We'll carry them with us