The Rat Patrol loses a member in combat. So, the British 8th Army assigns their desert expert - Sgt. Jack Moffitt of the Scots Greys - to the Rat Patrol to ensure the success of a crucial mission behind enemy lines. But, he must prove himself to a resistant Sergeant Troy, the American head of the unit. Moffitt tells Troy that the British 8th Army buried a cache of munitions and petrol at an abandoned oasis while retreating from the advancing Germans. Only his desert expertise can find the dune-covered location to destroy the stockpile before it falls into the enemy's hands. The Afrika Korps' Hauptmann Dietrich is also determined to find the rumored cache. Familiar with the Rat Patrol's tricks, he devises a trap to shadow them to the oasis, destroy them, and capture the supplies necessary for the upcoming German offensive. The Rat Patrol gets delayed by a broken axle, and, in the end, it is a race to see who will reach the supplies first.

The Rat Patrol gets itself captured as a prequel to capturing Africa Korps General Ernest von Helmreich. They plan to use the general to infiltrate and destroy a heavily guarded German ammunition depot to stop an upcoming attack. However, the general manages to attract the attention of a distant Nazi search party, and the Rat Patrol ends up trapped in a ravine, cut off by Capt. Dietrich's mobile squad. They construct a "fake panzer unit" of their own to escape, tricking the Germans into a retreat. They then make it to the largest of the Germans' ammo dumps and blow it.