CHAPTER FIFTEEN
_Death Takes Wing_
For the tenth time, Dave Dawson checked his position and made absolutelysure that he was where he was supposed to be. For the tenth time,countless fears shot through his brain to taunt and jeer at him. Hewasn't at the agreed rendezvous point. His navigation was all cockeyed.He was a hundred miles north of the point. He was a hundred miles southof it. He was--
"Cut it out, fellow!" he ordered himself. "This is a fine time for youto go haywire! You're simply here ahead of time. Your watch tells youthat. Freddy was held up a bit, that's all. Maybe he ran into a bit ofweather, or something. Maybe--"
Or something? But what? That was the question! Freddy Farmer could flythrough the toughest weather made. He was that kind of pilot. It wascrazy to think that weather would hold up Freddy. But where was he? Whywasn't he here?
These tantalizing questions pounded in Dawson's brain like the boomingof big guns. He clenched his teeth and gripped the controls of theLockheed Lightning so tightly that the knuckles of his hands showedwhite through the skin. That this was perhaps the last flight he mightever make didn't bother him much. What did was the fear that Freddy andhe might fail in the successful completion of this vitally importantmission. And that fear was doubled when he realized that the odds wereall against them. Yesterday when they had volunteered for the job MajorGeneral Hawker had told them in no uncertain terms that their chances offinding the secret Nazi bomber base were about one in a thousand, andtheir chances of coming back alive were about one in a million.
Yes, the odds were all against them, but that didn't matter. They'd hadthe odds against them before and had won out. So right after leavingMajor General Hawker's office they had selected two Lockheed Lightningson the field and flight tested them thoroughly. By then darkness hadsettled, so they had gone to one of the field hutments and tumbled intobed with their clothes on, so that there would be no waste of time incase they had to make a night take-off in a hurry.
Good fortune was theirs, however. They each had twelve solid hours ofsleep before word came that Nazi bombers were sighted off the coast.Five minutes later they were both in the air, but instead of flying outto sea, they carried out a prearranged flight plan. Dawson had flownnorthward to circle around to the east and then southward to a pointover the middle of the Atlas Mountains. And Farmer had flown south withthe idea of circling eastward, and then up north to rendezvous withDawson. One of them would be sure to cross the path of the Nazis wingingback to their secret base. The instant one of them spotted the Nazis hewould code call the other over his radio and give his position andcourse. The other would head that way at once, join up, and togetherthey would trail the Nazis to their base, and then code call Casablancawhere a hastily assembled squadron of American bombers was waiting.
Yes, a very carefully thought out plan of action, except for one flaw.And that one flaw was making itself known right now as Dawson coastedthe Lockheed about in the North African sky over the prearrangedrendezvous point. In short, he had not seen the Nazi bombers, and he hadnot heard so much as a whisper over the radio, though he had calledFreddy Farmer several times for a check. No bombers! Radio silence sinceCasablanca! So--
"So," Dave said to himself as he tried to still the fearful pounding ofhis heart, "So something has happened to Freddy! He's bumped intotrouble, and his radio went haywire on him. Or he's lost and has missedthe Nazis completely. Or--or he's dead!"
Dawson hardly realized that he had spoken the words until they were out.Their echo in his ears caused his mouth and throat to go dry, andfingers of ice to curl about his heart. He shook his head savagely andpounded one clenched fist on his knee.
"Stop it!" he ranted at himself. "Don't even let yourself think of it,you dope! Freddy will show up, or call you. He's just got to. He's--"
He cut the rest off short and stiffened in his seat as he caught sightof a plane ripping through the air toward him. As he opened his mouth tolet out a shout of joy at meeting up again with Freddy Farmer, hisbreath stuck in his throat.
"But that can't be Freddy!" he mumbled as he squinted his eyes at theoncoming plane. "That plane is coming from the east, and Freddy would becoming up from the south. And--Hey! My gosh! That--that plane is_German_! It's a Messerschmitt 109, a Nazi fighter plane, and headingright my way!"
He cut off the last with a vigorous shake of his head, as though toclear his vision. However, when he took another look, the plane wasstill a Nazi Messerschmitt 109, and it was still racing straight towardhim from out of the east. A moment later, though, just as Dawsoninstinctively slid the guard off the electric trigger button of hisguns, the on-streaking Messerschmitt swerved southward, and its nosewent slanting up in a climb.
"What the heck?" Dawson cried, as a faint sensation of disappointmentrippled through him. "Is he getting cold feet so soon? Or didn't he seeme?"
A couple of moments later, his last thought seemed to be proven true.The Messerschmitt pilot leveled off after he had climbed a couple ofthousand feet, and Dawson could tell by the decrease in the plane'sspeed that the pilot has eased back to cruising throttle. No more than acouple of miles separated the two aircraft now, and though theMesserschmitt was perhaps three thousand feet higher than the Lockheed,Dawson knew that he could close in on the Nazi in no time, if he wishedto.
That was just the point. Where a few moments ago he had been ready andeager for battle, he was now filled with a sense of caution. For onething, what was a Nazi ME 109 doing over the Atlas Mountains? Was itclose to its base--the same base used by the mysterious Junkersbombers--or was the pilot lost and wandering about in the North Africanheavens hundreds and hundreds of miles from where he should be? And foranother thing, why hadn't the Nazi spotted him? Was the pilot dead, andwas the aircraft simply flying itself until it ran out of gas?
"Or is this a smart trick, and I'm too dumb to catch on?" Dawsonmuttered the next thought aloud, and stared at the other plane that wasnow circling slowly about in the air. "Is he waiting for me to comepiling in, because he has some special surprise package waiting, orwhat?"
As he mulled over the question in an effort to guess at an answer thatmight be close to the truth, the Yank air ace searched the surroundingskies. However, if he expected to see any other planes in the heavens,he was doomed to disappointment. As far as he could see in everydirection there was nothing but sun-tinted blue North African sky and afew mountains of clouds piled up here and there.
"Maybe _I'm_ nuts!" he groaned, and gave a little shake of his head."Maybe I'm just seeing things. Or maybe I'm asleep and dreaming, butdon't realize it. Well, one German less is one German less, I alwayssay. So here goes for that bird tooting around up there. He'll--Well,for cat's sake! Now what?"
The last was because the Messerschmitt pilot had suddenly ceased hiscoasting around and had swung onto a course due south at an increasedspeed. And though Dawson gaped and stared in amazement, he let no "skygrass" grow under his feet. He instantly swung south and opened up histwo Allison engines, but continued to maintain his altitude of somethree thousand feet below the other plane.
For a full five minutes, the Nazi rocketed south with Dawson some twomiles behind him and holding steadily to the pace. At the end of thatfive minutes, though, the Messerschmitt reached the edges of one of thetowering mountains of clouds in the sky. Impulsively, Dave opened histhrottles so that he would not lose the Messerschmitt in the clouds. Theaction was unnecessary for the German pilot swerved to the east justbefore he came to the clouds. Once again his abrupt change of speedshowed that he had eased back to throttle cruising.
Anger took the place of amazement in Dawson, and he was on the point ofslamming up to give battle to the Messerschmitt, when suddenly twelveJunkers 88 long-range bombers came sliding out from under the mountainof cloud, looking for all the world as though they were rolling theirwheels across the peaks of the Atlas Mountains.
So suddenly and so weirdly did they appear that for a second or soDawson was unable to realize what they were. When tr
uth came to him, hesat up stiff and straight in the seat and let out a yell of excitedrelief.
"Goering's Snoopers!" Dave cried. "There they are, the bums, as sure asshooting! And on their way back to their base. No doubt of it, and, sohelp me, that Messerschmitt must be some kind of a lone escort come outto meet them and lead them home. Sure! There he goes sliding down, now.But--but where is Freddy? Where is good old Freddy? He made his flightsouth, so he must have crossed their path. He--!"
He cut his own words off abruptly as a squealing noise sounded in hisearphones. It rose and fell, and rose and fell again. Although he workedfuriously over the tuning knobs of his panel set, he could get nothingbut the squeal's. That is, nothing but squeals for the next minute ortwo. Then, suddenly, the squealing sound stopped, and a single spokenword came through as clear as a bell.
"Noswad!"
That single word made Dave's heart pound furiously, because it was hisown last name spelled backwards; because it was the signal call FreddyFarmer was to use when getting in radio contact with him. No sooner hadhe heard the code call spoken once, than the squealing sound filled hisears again. Whether it was Freddy's set or his that had gone haywire, hecould not tell at the moment. He simply put his lips to his own mike andshouted Freddy's code call at the top of his voice.
"Remraf! Remraf!" he shouted. "Can you hear me, Remraf? Over!"
The only reply that he received was the continued squeal in hisearphones. Once again he called Freddy, but the result was the same.Impulsively, he checked his own set as best he could, but found nothingwrong with it. As a matter of fact, to make definitely sure that his ownset was in perfect working order, he sent out a signal call toCasablanca Base and instantly received a reply that came in loud andclear.
"So that settles that," he grunted. "Freddy's set has gone haywire. Heprobably picked up those Snoopers long ago and hasn't been able tocontact me up to now. He's around. I can't see him, but he must bearound somewhere doing his job of trailing those Snoopers back to theirbase. With his eagle eyes, I'll bet a million bucks _he_ can see _me_!"
His heart overflowing with joy at the knowledge that Freddy Farmer wasalive and still flying, Dawson left his set tuned as fine as possibleand gave all of his attention to the Messerschmitt-led air cavalcade ofJunkers 88's that was sliding through the air over the mountain peaks.They were all well below Dawson's altitude now, and all he had to do wasto throttle to their speed and hug the sides of the cloud banks. True,there was a small chance that he might be sighted, silhouetted againstthe clouds as he was, but that was the chance he had to take. If he wassighted, he knew that it would be the Messerschmitt 109 that would turnback to drive him off, and so he kept his gaze on that plane and paidlittle or no attention to the bombers.
Eastward and then southward the Nazi planes flew, and then at the end ofsome thirty-five minutes, they changed their course to the east again,and then northward. Most of the Atlas Range was out of sight now. Aheadlay barren country that looked as though nothing, not even a blade ofgrass, had ever lived there. Farther ahead was the border line betweenMorocco and French Algeria, but of course there was nothing to mark it.Nothing, for as far as the eye could see there was only wasteland. Thesebarren lands of the western rim of the Sahara Desert seemed to shimmerand tremble in the blistering heat of the sun. Even the banks of cloudswere gone now. They had been left over the Atlas Mountains, and the sunblazing down made Dawson's throttles feel like red hot pokers, despitethe fact that he was some twelve thousand feet in the air.
As a matter of fact, the constant glare of the sun, and the intenseconcentration on the Nazi formation ahead and below him strained hiseyes to the utmost, and he began to see crazy objects and shapes thatwere no longer there when he took a second look.
It was because of this that he paid little or no attention to agray-green blur that appeared on the barren earth just ahead of the Naziplanes. That is, he gave it scant attention until he suddenly realizedthat the Nazi pilots had cut their throttles, and in follow-the-leaderstyle were circling around and down toward that gray-green blurr.Shoving up his goggles, he dug knuckles into his smarting eyes, thenimpulsively leaned forward as though that bit of movement would affordhim a better look.
But whether or not it did, he certainly saw more than he had the firsttime. The gray-green blur was a small group of shrub-covered hills thatrose right up out of the desert. That it was some kind of an oasis wasevident by the patches of pale green here and there.
One thing was definite, however. To Dawson it was the only thing thatmattered. That gray-green patch on the seemingly limitless expanse ofshimmering and quivering Sahara was the secret base of Goering'sSnoopers! He had found it! There it was! The first two of the bomberswere already on the ground on the eastern fringe of the gray-greenpatch. They looked like beetles as they moved along over the ground.
A wild, fierce joy surged up in Dawson as he stared down at the place,but when he happened to glance at his fuel gauges, a tiny icy shiverwent through him, and his joy was tempered by cold, hard reality. He hadfuel for about another half hour in the air. Fuel enough to take him afraction of the distance back to his Casablanca base. What he hadexpected had happened, but only now did the full significance of itdescend upon him.
"But we found it!" he shouted wildly as he put his lips to his flap mikeand reached out to tune his set to the Casablanca Base wave length. "Andthat's what matters most. Now to tell Casablanca and--"
At that moment Dawson's ears were filled with the savage yammer ofaerial machine guns and air cannon, above and behind him!
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