_Broken Wings_
Whether or not the Messerschmitt's pilot saw Dave closing in on him at
lightning speed, the German plane held straight to its course westward.
Dave frowned and slid off the safety guard on his trigger button, and
started lining up the Messerschmitt in his electric windshield sight.
"Of course the guy could have suddenly gone blind," he murmured to
himself. "Or maybe he's just sick and tired of this war. Me, I wouldn't
know. But ... there's just one thing to do when you see a Jerry lad
plowing around over forbidden ground. And so!"
As he spoke the last he started to apply pressure on the little
button that would send a shower of machine gun and aerial cannon
slugs straight at the German plane. That is, he started to. He didn't
complete the action, for at that instant something happened that
brought him up straight in the seat with a gasp of surprise.
The Messerschmitt dropped down by the left wing and something went
hurtling out through the opened glass "hatch" of the three place
cockpit. That something became the figure of a man in the next split
second. And in the split second after that Dave saw the white puff and
the man's parachute blossoming into being. The tumbling figure was
jerked sharply upward toward the sky. It seemed to hover motionless
for a brief instant, and then start swinging back and forth like the
pendulum of a clock while the air filled parachute envelop drifted
slowly earthward.
"Now, ain't that something!" Dave grunted. "The boys start getting
scared before I've even fired a shot. Wonder which one he is. The
pilot, radioman, or the rear gunner. Anyway, he sure...."
He bit off the rest as he took another look at the figure swaying
back and forth at the ends of the parachute's shroud lines. There was
something about the man that didn't seem right. But in the next instant
Dave realized why. The parachutist was not garbed in flying gear, or
even in the uniform of a member of the Nazi Luftwaffe. Instead he wore
civilian clothes.
"Spy dropping in broad daylight?" Dave gasped. "Well, I've seen almost
everything now! If that isn't a dumb thing to try and pull on us. What
does Hitler think we are, anyway? As dumb and thick as his murdering
Nazi gang?"
He let it go unanswered. As a matter of fact he didn't bother to give
it a second thought. He didn't for the very simple reason that sudden
movement of the Messerschmitt showed that the pilot was still aboard.
And the sudden movement also showed, rather, indicated, that the German
pilot had decided to knock one Dave Dawson out of the English sky
before buzzing on back home to Naziland.
At any rate, the One-Ten whipped around in a wing screaming turn,
dropped sharply by the nose for a brief instant and then came tearing
up at an angle for the belly of Dave's Spitfire. The Messerschmitt's
machine guns and air cannon hammered out sound and jetting flame. Not
a shot, however, smacked into the Mark 5 Spitfire. Before the German
plane started to zoom Dave belted the stick over, jumped hard on right
rudder and spun in less than the area of a dime. Before the maneuver
was half completed Dave pulled the Spitfire's nose up straight for the
sky.
He roared up a good hundred feet, then kicked the ship over on wingtip
and dropped straight down like ten ton of brick. Right below him was
the Messerschmitt One-Ten, its pilot striving frantically to kick
out from under and go skidding away into the clear. He might just as
well have jumped out and tried to walk across the sky back across the
Channel. Dave had him cold, and everybody concerned knew it.
"Next time, stay home!" Dave shouted and pressed the trigger button.
His guns yammered sound and death. The Messerschmitt took the whole
works square in the cockpit. The plane leaped and bolted off to
one side as though it had been sideswiped by an invisible express
train. For a brief moment Dave saw the pilot and the gunner fighting
desperately to shove the cockpit's hood wide open and bail out with
their parachutes. Then they became lost to view as sheets of flame
belched out from both the port and starboard engines, and the whole
plane became a raging ball of fire that went tumbling over and over
down toward the ground.
"Another one you won't be using any more, Goering!" Dave grunted and
pulled the Mark 5 out of its engine howling dive. "But I wonder why one
of those birds jumped so soon? Was he a spy, or was he just too yellow
to even be in the Nazi Air Force. Boy! That would be being plenty
yellow, what I mean!"
As he voiced his thoughts aloud he started circling about staring
downward for a sign of the descending parachute. He spotted it in
less time than it takes to tell. The parachutist was still a good two
thousand feet from the ground, and a stiff wind was sending it skidding
rapidly to the right as the figure at the ends of the shroud lines
made no effort to "slip" his 'chute (or spill air from the envelop
by hauling down on the shroud lines on that side) to counteract the
side-ward movement. As a matter of fact the figure at the ends of the
shroud lines didn't seem to be moving a muscle. Instead of the man's
hands reaching up to grab the shroud lines and take some of his weight
off the harness, the arms just dangled down at the man's side.
"Maybe he broke them bailing out," Dave grunted and stuck the nose
of his Spitfire down. "If so, he's going to land with an awful jolt.
And that ground wind's liable to drag him half way across this little
island of England. Yeah! Maybe you should have stayed put, my little
Jerry."
Dave kept his eyes on the seemingly lifeless figure floating earthward
with his parachute, and held the Spitfire in its dive until he was down
close. There he pulled out, leveled off, and began to circle about the
parachutist as a strange sense of weird curiosity got hold of him. And
as he cut in closer and closer to the dangling figure his curiosity
gradually changed to a sense of utter astonishment. The man in civilian
clothes kept his chin sunk down on his chest all the time. He didn't
once raise his head to look at Dave's circling plane. And it was
absolutely certain that he must be hearing the roar of the Rolls-Royce
engine.
As far as that went, however, the man didn't do anything. Any and all
movement was caused by the wind whipping at the parachute. The man
could well be a sack of wet meal being lowered to earth.
"Maybe he took sleeping tablets before he jumped out," Dave grunted
aloud. "Or maybe.... Hey! What gives?"
He shouted the question and sent the Spitfire ripping in so close to
the dangling figure that he came within a foot of brushing the man with
his wingtip. He veered off just in time but not before he saw that
there was a sheet of paper pinned to the front of the man's jacket.
Whether or not there was writing on the paper, Dave couldn't see. But
that the sheet of paper was pinned there was enough to make up his mind.
"This gets screwier!" he shouted and hauled back his throttle. "Screwy
as can be. Maybe I'm all wet, but that lad looks stone dead to me. And
somebody has pinned a note on his jacket. Me, I'm going down and find
out what in heck this is all about."
Checking the general direction in which the parachute was drifting,
Dave then took a look at the ground below. As luck would have it he
spotted a field with plenty of room for a Spitfire to sit down. Having
spotted the field he slid down, let down his wing flaps, and presently
settled light as a feather on an expanse of slightly uneven ground. As
he wiggled out of his safety harness, and parachute straps, he heard
the sound of another plane tearing down. One look upward showed him a
diving Spitfire with a big figure "8" painted on either side of the
fuselage. He chuckled and vaulted from the pit to the ground.
"Good old Freddy, the watch dog," he said. "Betcha think the guy
slugged me down. Nope, pal. Not yet, anyway."
Not bothering with a second glance at Farmer's plane coming down to a
fast landing, Dave broke into a run and raced toward a smaller field
in back of a line of trees. The parachutist was just disappearing
from sight down behind the trees. By the time Dave reached the field
the man was on the ground. All of him on it! He was crumpled flat and
the ground wind was starting to fill out the parachute silk like a
boat sail and drag it across the ground. Speeding up, Dave tore over
and practically threw himself at the shroud lines. He caught them and
jerked hard on the underside ones ... the lines extending to the part
of the silk envelop that was nearest the ground. The action "tripped"
the parachute envelop, spilled the air from it, and caused it to
collapse to the ground. As an added precaution Dave darted forward and
gathered up the limp folds of silk in his arms.
Then he walked back to the crumpled figure on the ground. The man
had his face turned toward the sky. His eyes were closed, and he was
dead. A bullet hole square in the middle of his forehead was all the
confirmation Dave needed. The Yank took his gaze off the death chilled
face, and looked at the sheet of paper pinned to the front of the dead
man's jacket. The paper had been torn by the wind, and the landing,
but the words written with blue crayon stood out clear and readable.
Dave's heart turned cold and his head pounded as he read the words.
British Intelligence:
Take your swine dog back. We don't want him, the fool!
von Peiplow
For a long minute Dave stared at the words, hardly able to believe his
eyes. Then he shook himself out of his trance, knelt down beside the
dead man and searched his pockets. His "reward" consisted of a small
notebook from which half the pages had been torn out, the stub of a
pencil, a few French francs, a pocket knife, a clip of cheap German
matches, and half a pack of even cheaper German Army cigarettes. There
was nothing else. Not a single shred of anything that could tell him
the man's identity.
Somehow, though, he felt sure the man was British though the clothes
he wore were Flemish peasant, and his face was Teutonic in appearance,
being broad and flat, with a low forehead and short, bristling straw
colored hair. True, not a thing about the dead man looked British, yet
somehow Dave was convinced he was.
"Dave? What in the world?"
Freddy's cry straightened Dave up and turned him around. Freddy Farmer
had come to a stop not five feet away, and was standing there gazing
at him out of eyes that seemed to pop from their sockets. In the next
second Dave realized he still held the dead man's possessions in his
hands. He scowled at his pal.
"No, not what you're thinking, you dope!" he growled. "And remind me to
bust you on the nose for even _thinking_ it! Holy smokes! What do you
think I am? A darn grave robber, or something?"
"Of course not, Dave!" Freddy said sharply and pinked a little. "You
just startled me, that's all. I mean, bending over him with your hands
full of things. I...."
"Skip it, and come take a look yourself!" Dave cut him off, and pointed
at the paper still pinned to the dead man's jacket. "Read that! But
don't expect me to answer your questions!"
The English youth came closer, bent over and read the words on the
paper. It was several seconds before he lifted his head and looked at
Dave. And when he did dumbfounded amazement was swimming in his eyes.
He shook his head, blinked hard, and took another quick glance down at
the paper to make sure.
"Well, strike me pink!" he finally exclaimed in a bewildered tone.
"This is the craziest thing ever!"
"You're not telling me anything new," Dave grunted. Then more to
himself he added, "So that's why they tried to sneak over? To toss this
poor lad out and let him float down to be recognized."
"What's that?" Freddy cried sharply. "You mean he came down by
parachute? From what?"
Dave jerked his thumb at the rolled up parachute silk and shroud lines
on the ground a few feet from him.
"There it is," he said. "The One-Ten popped down out of the cloud stuff
right in front of me. It was duck soup and I was just about to give him
the works when one of the crew bailed out. That startled me so that I
didn't fire. Then I woke up just in time to see the One-Ten cutting
around to give me the business. I was lucky and able to get out into
the clear. After a bit the One-Ten's pilot was unlucky. He went down in
flames. I saw this lad floating to earth, and he looked kind of funny
to me. Didn't move at all. So I came down for a look-see. And there he
is. He didn't bail out. He was _thrown_ out, with his 'chute opened!"
Freddy whistled softly and rubbed the side of his face.
"I just saw you circling down, and I thought you'd been hit, or
something," he said after a while. "So I came down to see if I could
help. The others are still upstairs hunting for the bloke. When I
realized you weren't with us, I went hunting for you."
"Thanks, pal," Dave grinned and gave Freddy an affectionate slap on the
shoulder. "I had another of my hunches and went down under the stuff,
figuring he might drop down through. He did. But, if you can help me, I
sure wish you would. Explain this business."
Freddy made a hopeless gesture with his hands, and read the note again.
"Von Peiplow?" he murmured aloud and screwed up his face in deep
thought. "I think I've heard that name before. It has a familiar ring,
or something."
"Yeah, like Smith, or Jones," Dave grunted. "But wait! I.... Aw, nuts!
I thought for a second that it was going to jog my own memory. Well,
there's no use our standing here. We're only drawing blanks. Catch hold
of his heels, Freddy."
"Heels?" the English youth gasped. "Why? You're not going to bury him,
are you? I think...."
"Don't!" Dave snapped. "You'll over-tax that pea inside your head you
call a brain. Of course I'm not going to bury him. But I'm certainly
not going to leave him here, either. I'm going to fly him back to the
Squadron. I don't know where that One-Ten planned to toss him out,
but I think they tossed him out too soon. We'll take him back to the
Squadron and have the O.C. get in touch with British Intelligence. The
note's addressed to them, so I guess they'll probably know what it's
all about. But I sure hope he's English, and not Nazi like he looks."
"Why?" Freddy demanded. "Why do you hope he's English?"
Dave flung him a scornful look.
"That should be easy to guess," he said. "I'm particular who I ride
around in my airplane. And Nazis aren't on my list. Now, catch hold of
his feet and help me carry him back to the plane. I'll put him across
the cockpit and hang onto him with one hand."
"That field isn't so good for Spitfire take-off," Freddy commented
dubiously.
"So what?" Dave growled. "So if I crack up, you can fly both of us
back. Now, stop worrying, and lend me a hand, pal."