CHAPTER FIVE
_Dead Man's Wings_
A thin pale line of light marked where the eastern horizon met the nightsky. Settled comfortably in the pit of his Lockheed P-Thirty-Eight, DaveDawson nodded his head and half raised his free hand in a form ofsalute.
"Greetings, dawn," he murmured. "Nice to see that you're with us again.Now if you'll just brighten up enough to let me make sure that thatreally is Freddy's plane off my left wing, then everything will bepretty okay."
For a little under six hours he had been driving the Lockheed across thecold grey waters of the North Atlantic with only the dark of night, thestars, and an occasional blink of Freddy Farmer's navigation lights forcompanionship. The take-off at Botwood, and the flight up to now, hadbeen totally without incident or accident. Now, though, dawn was comingup in the east. The light of a new day was spreading across the face ofa war-torn world. And in time of war no man can tell what the new daymay bring for himself, or for anybody else, for that matter.
"But we should be overtaking the ferry bombers soon," he grunted thethought aloud. "And at least that will be something to break themonotony. Boy! I sure take my hat off to the ferry pilots. Night afternight, tooling planes across to England, with nothing to do but sit andlet her ride the air. Personally, I'd go nuts. But--Ah, there you are,Freddy, old pal. It really has been you all the time."
He spoke the last as sufficient dawn light spread up out of the east topermit him a good look at the other P-Thirty-Eight that was keeping paceon the left. The two air aces waved to each other, and waggled wings insalute. But neither of them spoke over the radio, for that was the onefixed rule of ferry flying across the North Atlantic. Maintain radiosilence at all times, and keep it! Too many Nazi stations were open andwaiting to pick up ferry plane radio signals and take a cross bearing ontheir exact position, and send out their shore-based long range fightersto reduce the number of planes that were heading for England.
And so the two youths simply saluted each other silently, and drew into closer formation--where they could make faces at each other, and gothrough the kind of gestures that only airmen understand. After a fewminutes of that long distance horseplay, however, they tired of it. Andboth of them concentrated on searching the brightening skies ahead fortheir first glimpse of the bombers being ferried over. It wasn't longbefore Freddy Farmer's eagle eyes scored another "first."
Dave saw him waggle his wings vigorously and point ahead and a bit tothe left. He looked in that direction, and just when his straining eyeswere about to smart and water he saw the cluster of black dots outlinedagainst the light in the east. He counted them, and heaved a littleimpulsive sigh of relief when they totalled twenty-one. Twenty-onebombers had taken off from Botwood. He stared at the dots, watched themgrow larger and take on their rightful outlines, and wondered in whichone Major Barber was riding. He didn't wonder in which ones the advancecontingent of Commandos was riding, because he knew that. Every one ofthe ferry bombers had some of the Commandos aboard.
"And it's up to me and Freddy to see that they reach England in goodshape," he grunted aloud. "Well, no reason why we can't see that theydo just that. The way I feel now, I'm set to tackle a couple of dozenlong range Nazi fighters. And Freddy must feel the same. So that makes atotal of forty-eight we could take care of nicely, and I doubt thatGoering would send out more than that number. Hold it, kid! Are youtrying to get a little vocal cord exercise, or are you trying to proveto yourself you're quite a hot pilot? Why not shut up and tend to yourknitting, and let come what will come?"
With a tight grin and a nod for emphasis, he continued flying toward thegroup of ferry bombers. Presently he waggled his wings at Freddy andsignalled with his free hand. The English youth answered with a nod ofhis head, and the pair took up escort positions above and to the rear ofthe twenty-one planes winging down the home stretch to England.
Some twenty minutes ticked past, and suddenly Freddy Farmer cameswerving in sharply toward Dave's plane. As Dave saw his pal cut in, theback of his neck started to tingle, and his heart started to pound alittle harder against his ribs. He knew at once the reason for Freddy'ssudden maneuver, but as he swept the dawn-tinted skies ahead with hiseyes he was unable to spot anything to justify it. But that didn't stopthe tingling at the back of his neck, nor the increased pounding of hisheart. Freddy, of course, had sighted enemy aircraft, and that hecouldn't see them didn't mean that Freddy was all wet.
Anyway, he stopped peering at the skies ahead and looked at Freddyswinging in to wingtip nearness. Across the short stretch of air spacethat separated them he saw the flush of excitement in Freddy's face, andhe imagined that he could see the bright, brittle light of battle in hispal's eyes. Freddy had shoved open his "greenhouse" and was sticking anarm up through the opening and pointing wildly ahead and a degree or twoto the south.
Dave squinted in that direction, and squinted hard. But all he got forhis efforts was an ache in his eyes. He could see absolutely nothing butthe advance glare of the new sun that was racing up out of the east.True, his imagination caused him to "see" all sorts of other things. Buthe had only to brush a hand across his eyes, or blink, and the "otherthings" wouldn't be there any more.
Then, suddenly, he saw them!
Three moving dots, so low down that they were practically in line withthe horizon, and completely backgrounded by the yellowish orange raysof the coming sun. The instant he spotted them he pinned them in hisvision, and breathlessly waited for the moment when they would take onsufficient outline for him to tell their type. On impulse he bent hislips to the flap mike to ask Freddy the obvious question. But he checkedhimself in time, and spoke not a word. Radio silence had been the order.And radio silence it had to be, even if the whole darn Nazi Luftwaffewas tearing out for a crack at the ferry bombers.
"They could be R.A.F. planes headed out to give us a hand with theescorting," he murmured.
Even as he spoke the words, however, he knew that he was simplywhistling in the dark. If it had been decided for R.A.F. planes to flyout from England and meet them, they would have been informed of thatfact before leaving Botwood. No, those three dots weren't R.A.F. planes.So there was only one answer. They were Nazi long range fighters, andColonel Stickney's words about German Intelligence not being stupid werebearing fruit. Word of this ferry bomber-Commando aerial convoy toEngland had reached German ears. And there were three Nazi planestearing out to do something drastic about it.
For a moment or two Dave took his eyes off the three dots rushing up outof the dawn light and glanced at the bomber formation prop-clawingtoward England. Ice coated his heart, and his throat became dry andtight. Twenty-one bombers heading for England, unarmed. Twenty-onebombers, each of which carried its crew _and_ a certain number of highlytrained Yank Commandos!
"And it's up to Freddy and me to see that they get there!" Dave mutteredgrimly.
In the next instant a wave of blazing anger swept through him. What didColonel Stickney think Freddy and he were? A whole confounded fightersquadron? It wasn't fair to give them complete charge of such animportant aerial convoy. More fighter pilots should have been sent alongto help them out, just in case. Doggone it! What did they think Freddyand he were? Cats with nine lives apiece? Darn it...!
The wave of anger vanished just as quickly as it came. A cold calmnesstook charge of Dave, and he deliberately reached up his free hand andtwisted the ring on his electric trigger button to "Fire." Then heturned his head and glanced over at Freddy. A set grin was on theEnglish youth's face, and as their eyes met Freddy lifted his righthand with the fingers closed and the thumb sticking straight up. Davenodded and returned the thumbs up sign.
"After all, there're only three of them," he grunted, and switched hisgaze back to the advancing dots. "If Freddy and I can't handle three ofthe tramps, then we just don't belong!"
The dots were no longer dots. They had taken on definite shape andoutlines. And they were as Dave expected them to be, three long rangeMesserschmitt One-Tens. At that very insta
nt the two wing planes brokeaway from the center plane to opposite sides, and took up positions fora three direction attack on the ferry bomber formation. Dave shot outhis hand and shoved the throttles of the P-Thirty-Eight's Allisonengines wide open. Then he eased the nose up a hair, and with Freddyright at his wingtip he went streaking up over the ferry bombers andstraight for the center Messerschmitt.
Not a word, of course, had been spoken between them. But there was noneed for words. Too often had they tackled three enemy planes in spreadout line formation not to know exactly what should be done, and to do itinstinctively. And so, wingtip to wingtip, they slammed straight at thecenter Messerschmitt as though it were the only enemy craft in the air,and they were bent on its immediate destruction.
When they were still a ways from it they both opened fire and sliced ashower of hissing bullets across the sky. If they got any lucky shotsinto the center Messerschmitt, they didn't know. But hitting it was nottheir big idea. On the contrary, they counted on exactly what happened.The pilot of the center Messerschmitt didn't like the idea of twoP-Thirty-Eights boring in at him. He started to return the fire, thenlost heart and slammed down in a sharp dive.
But even before the German broke away from the fight, Dave and Freddywere completing the rest of their maneuver. Like streaks of greasedlightning, each whirled off to his side and went thundering in for abroadside attack on the two other Messerschmitts about to close with thehelpless ferry bomber formation. Maybe the pilots of those two Naziplanes figured that they had actually remained hidden in the rays of thedawn sun. Maybe they figured that Dave and Freddy had decided to makesure of at least one victim, and pray the other two would miss thebombers and over-shoot and have to come back. In fact, maybe those Nazipilots figured a lot of things. The point is, though, they figured allwrong. For a couple of moments they had a chance at the bombers that wasas easy as shooting fish in a barrel. But in the next they had a coupleof flying wild men on their necks.
The impulse to twist around and see how Freddy was making out with hisman was strong in Dave as he went cutting in at his victim with all gunsblazing. Naturally, though, he didn't dare take out even that smallamount of time. Even if Freddy and he got their respectiveMesserschmitts there was still a third boiling around some place in thesky. And so he tore in savagely, and thrilled with wild joy as he sawhis tracers cutting into the Messerschmitt from its two spinning propsclear back to the double-finned tail. The Nazi gunner-observer returnedhis fire, and the pilot tried to whip around and into the clear. For allthe good it did him he might just as well have climbed out and tried towalk the dawn sky back to Germany.
The Messerschmitt seemed suddenly to fly smack into an invisible brickwall in the sky. The plane fell off sharply to the right, and came wayup by the nose. For a brief instant it hovered there in the air. Thenred flame belched out from the two underslung Benz-Daimler engines, andin the next split second the whole business was just a mass of fireslithering down toward the rolling grey-green swells of the NorthAtlantic.
"Save a seat for Hitler, where you're going!" Dave yelled as he pulledhis P-Thirty-Eight up and around. "He'll be joining you before verylong. And--"
The rest died in his throat, and his heart seemed to zoom up and jamagainst his back teeth. It was at that moment that he saw FreddyFarmer's plane flip-flopping and half spinning down out of the sky asthough either it were completely out of control--or its pilot were dead.And thundering down with blazing guns after Freddy were the two otherMesserschmitts.
"No, no, it can't happen!" Dave sobbed wildly, and whirled off his climband down into a dive. "Freddy boy! What happened? They didn't get you!_They didn't get you!_"
Those and other words of anguish spilled off his lips as he hammered hisLockheed down in a wing-screaming dive. So great was his excitement, andso great the terror that clutched at his heart, he failed to see thatNazi bullets weren't coming very close to Freddy's plane. As a matter offact, the Germans were shooting half-heartedly. With the Lockheed headedstraight for the North Atlantic, they figured that the finish of theirvictim was inevitable.
But they hadn't figured on Dave, nor the terrific diving speed of hisplane. As a result the "fun" for one of them was short-lived. Thoughhis heart shed tears of blood for Freddy Farmer, Dave's grip on thecontrols was rock steady, and his eye to the ring sight keen and sharp.A two second burst from his guns was all that was needed. A longer burstwould have been sheer waste of ammunition. The Nazi's wing came off asthough hacked clean by a knife. What was left spun like so much stiffpaper tossed into a whirlpool, and then broke up in a shower of flyingwreckage.
One Nazi less, but what of it? Freddy was but a couple of hundred feetfrom the water now, and still flip-flopping helplessly downward with theremaining German pecking away at him. Stark reality was like white hotknives twisting about in Dave's heart and in his brain. Tears floodedhis eyes, and he unconsciously hammered his free fist against thealready wide open throttles.
"Dear God, please no!" he sobbed. "Don't take Freddy. Don't take Freddyaway. I need him! England needs him. The whole decent part of the worldneeds him. Please don't...!"
Dave never finished the last, for at that exact instant a miracle seemedto take place right before his startled eyes. Freddy Farmer's planestopped flip-flopping and spinning around abruptly. As though someonehad reached down and stopped it, the Lockheed came up onto even keel.But it did much more than that! It came up past even keel and on up intoa power zoom. Its guns yammered out sound and flame, and perhaps for theinfinitesimal part of a split second the pilot of the third and lastMesserschmitt was the most stunned and bewildered man in the whole wideworld.
But only for that flash of time. In practically nothing flat he was nolonger capable of thought, and less of action. He was just a dead manhunched over the controls of a diving plane--that is, thebullet-shattered wreckage of a diving plane. Before he had had thechance to blink or move a muscle, Freddy Farmer had pinned him cold tothe dawn sky. And, not a little bewildered himself, Dave saw theMesserschmitt fall apart in mid-air, and Freddy Farmer, grinning fromear to ear, come tearing up past him and level off the top of his zoom.Automatically, Dave pulled up out of his own dive and swung around tojoin Freddy Farmer. The English-born air ace was still grinning, and hewas holding up one hand, forming an "O" with thumb and forefinger, andextending the other three straight upward. Dave gaped at him a momentlonger, and then shook his head to drive the cobwebs and mist away.
"So, just another Freddy Farmer trick!" he growled, and shook a fist atthe English youth. "I might have known that you were simply slipping outof a tight jam. And to think I was beginning to pray for you--you bum!"
Freddy, of course, didn't hear the words, but he saw Dave's moving lips,and probably guessed what they were saying. His mouth opened in silentlaughter, and he made a gesture with one hand, which was just the sameas his lips saying:
"Weren't getting worried, were you, old chap?"