Free The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger by David King Page B

room?"
    "That ought to bug them proper." Troy laughed shortly. "Providing we're not on the roof to give them the answer when they look."
    Troy ran to the front of the building and looked down. No one was in the street and he heard no voices. He ran back to Tully and Wilson. Tully was back in his burnoose and robe. Wilson spun the wheel of his Zippo and sparks flew. The wick did not light.
    "Put that away," Troy snarled. "Come on."
    He jogged ahead to the other side and leaned over the wall next to the water tank. Gradually he was able to make out the dark surface of a roof below. It was difficult to judge but he estimated the drop at ten to twelve feet plus three feet from a hand grip at the top of the wall.
    "I'll go first," he said, "and see if there are any obstructions."
    "Why not secure the rope and go down it, Sergeant?" Wilson said disapprovingly.
    "Because we'd have to leave the rope behind and I don't want any evidence up here that points to us," Troy snapped and went over the wall.
    He clung to the parapet a moment and dropped, landing on a hard surface with his knees bent. He rolled over and came up on his feet, crouched and swept the roof below the water tank with his hands. Above, a figure leaned over the wall.
    "Okay?" Tully called softly.
    "Come on," Troy said, finding nothing.
    Wilson fell first and Tully as soon as the thud sounded. Troy scrambled over to them.
    "Everything all right?" Troy asked quickly.
    "Yeah," Tully drawled.
    "I hurt my hip when I hit," Wilson said.
    "Walk, man, walk," Troy said nervously, helping Wilson to his feet. "Let's check it out."
    With Troy at his elbow, Wilson tottered stiffly for a few feet and then walked almost normally although he seemed to favor his left leg.
    "I can make it," Wilson said thinly.
    "It'll walk out, sir," Troy said, grimly thinking, a bruise and he's going to be brave about it. "Let's move on. Over the rooftops to the hole in the wall."
    "Used to be a cave we called the hole-in-the-wall where we hid out from revenooers," Tully drawled.
    "Sometimes I wish you still were there," Troy said.
    Although there still was no moon, the cloud cover seemed to be thinning and the walls between buildings and objects on the rooftops became distinguishable. No sound came from the squirming alley below and as they moved from building to building, now merely crawling or stepping over the walls that separated the one-story houses and stores, the entire Arab community with the exception of an occasional dog seemed to be asleep. Troy led the single file with Wilson in the middle. His slight limp had disappeared and Troy stepped up the pace until they were trotting, crouched, near the backs of the buildings. As they ran they carried with them the strange, dust-ridden smells of the town that had been cooked into the buildings for centuries.
    The rooftops formed a strange geometric pattern as the buildings bent away from the bazaar like a cornered quarter of an octagon. Troy turned another comer and saw one hundred yards ahead the lamp burning in the vaulted arch. We've taken you again, Dietrich, he thought triumphantly.
    Wilson and Tully came up beside him and he motioned them to crouch while he examined their situation. The buildings extended to about ten feet from the wall and then there was an open area to the base of the fortification. The wall was about five feet thick at its foundation and and about one foot thick at the top, a good twelve feet above the ground. With the clear space between the buildings and the wall, it was impossible to enter or leave the village without a scaling ladder.
    The guard was standing in the middle of the entrance passage which was no more than four feet wide, too narrow to admit a vehicle. He was under the acetylene lantern and his broad shoulders were to Troy as he faced the desert. Suddenly the guard turned about, stepped out of the entrance into the town and a squad of soldiers came through, a tight two abreast, at double time. The first two