Read The Rat Patrol 4 - Two-Faced Enemy for Free Online Page A

helmet back on his sweaty forehead, "but we got to give the jeeps a break. How about a bottle of beer while we water the horsepower?"
    "Tully's right," Hitch said. "We can drink our beer while we cool the motors down."
    Troy looked at Moffitt whose smile had reached his eyes. Moffitt nodded.
    Troy yielded. "All right, the doctor and I will take ours at our weapons. You can serve them up to us."
    The beer already was tepid and soon would be disagreeable, Troy thought as Tully and Hitch lifted the hoods, uncapped the radiators and let them blow their heads of steam before starting slowly to refill them from the GI cans. Troy looked toward Moffitt and smiled as he saw him with a beer bottle in one hand and his glasses in the other turned back in the direction of the Sherman tank. Lifting his own glasses, Troy focused them on the observer in the first tank. The man, waving casually, suddenly motioned frantically toward the rocks beyond the jeeps.
    Dropping his beer bottle and glasses, Troy swung with his machine gun glimpsing the same movement from Moffitt as he did.
    "Tully! Hitch! Down under the jeeps!" he shouted before he had fully turned.
    A hail of automatic fire was droning angrily at the jeeps from a dozen men in Arab robes, who were racing down the trail from the two large slabs of stone five hundred yards away. The heavy Browning machine gun began to spit in Troy's hand. The thought flashed across Troy's mind that Tully had had the good sense to bang down the hood giving him unrestricted field of fire. He raked the first of the robed men with a burst, then a second thought flashed across his mind: he was standing on enough explosives to blow up the town of Sidi Beda.
     
    The orange sun was sinking into the calm Mediterranean, dusk was descending quickly over Sidi Beda when Colonel Dan Wilson dropped into the chair behind his olive-colored metal desk at HQ. He sat for a moment, staring without awareness at the whirring ceiling fan, numbed by events beyond discomfort at the lingering heat. He shook his head abruptly and lighted a cigarette that had an unfamiliar hot and bitter taste. All that could be done had been accomplished, and at least for the moment he believed the port was secured. The cargo vessels with their destroyer escort had withdrawn and the port seemed oddly, ominously deserted without the clanking chains and grinding winches on the piers. He had clamped the lid on the town and sealed off the native quarter. The MPs and men from the transportation company were patrolling the docks and two armored cars guarded the main military boulevard along the bay front. At Latsus Pass, half a dozen halftracks were strategically placed near the bottom, ready to blast any Jerry armor that attempted to break out and another half dozen armored vehicles backed them up. The rest of his armor was at the edge of the port, ready for action wherever they were needed.
    It was a state of siege, Wilson wearily admitted, but if the tanks could hold above the town forty-eight hours, he had a fighting chance. The bomber support he'd requested could not be immediately diverted, but he'd have it within two days. His observation plane had been in the air during the afternoon and reported the massing of Jerry armor for the two-pronged attack he had anticipated. Well, he thought grimly, let the enemy come on. Jerry would sacrifice a good deal of his numerical superiority in the minefields before he reached the Sherman tanks.
    He walked to the window, staring into the dusk of the partially blacked out town. A patrol in an armored car moved slowly down the military avenue, searchlight poking into the mouths of the alleys that made a maze of the native quarter. He wondered whether the Rat Patrol had found a back trail and had penetrated the enemy lines. He had no illusions that the Rat Patrol could win a battle single-handed, but neither did he underestimate their importance. They struck swiftly, not only inflicting severe damage, but