happened and request that all available planes be sent out in an effort
to block off the Nazi. But he checked himself even as the desire was
born. The recall was being sent out for a very, very obvious reason.
Weather was closing down fast and it would soon be impossible for any of
the carriers to take their aircraft aboard. They would have to circle
about waiting for the weather to clear, or find a large enough hole to
get down through. Failing either, they would finally run out of fuel and
be forced down into the sea, perhaps to be lost forever. And a mighty
aircraft carrier task force about to go into battle could ill afford to
lose any great number of its fighter aircraft protection.
"Skip it!" Dawson grunted with an unconscious shake of his head. "They
wouldn't be any help, anyway, in this weather. You just can't ask
Vice-Admiral Macon to run the risk of losing so many planes, and not
even find the rat. No, it's up to you. You, and Freddy Farmer, wherever
he is. But call him and ..."
He stopped himself with another and more vigorous shake of his head. And
for several moments he droned forward at full throttle, striving to stab
the fog layer that stretched out endlessly beneath him. With reaches of
cloud scud a couple of thousand feet above him, it was like flying down
a long, long, pink-tinted corridor in a world of beautiful make believe.
But it was not beautiful or make believe to Dawson. He hated that
sun-tinted fog layer with his entire being. And it was cruel, ugly,
heartless reality, and not make believe.
"No, don't call Freddy on your radio!" he said to himself. "He may not
be even close. Keep radio silence. You've got to. That Nazi rat has
ears, and he certainly understands English. At least don't let him know
that you're trying to hunt him out. He'll ..."
And it was at that instant that the light dawned on Dawson. It was at
that moment that his stupid thinking left him, and he got a little horse
sense to take its place. What he should really do was so simple, so
obvious, and so clear that his cheeks went oven hot from a blush of
shame.
"You ten-cent, cockeyed, bat-brained dope!" he ranted at himself. "Of
course, of course! That rat is trying to make Truk, isn't he? That's
_his_ objective, isn't it? Certainly! Then why flub-dub around in this
stuff hoping that he'll break up through to let you see where he is? You
sap, get this air wagon hitting on everything it's got, and high tail
for Truk yourself. Don't try to smoke this rat _out_! Get to the Truk
area first, and smoke him _down_!"
With a savage nod of his head to emphasize his words, he quickly made a
check of the course and speed he had flown since taking off from the
Trenton's flight deck, and then plotted a course that _should_ take him
to that little cluster of pin point islands, surrounded by a coral reef,
thirty-five to forty miles in diameter, known as Truk. Yes, it should
take him there, and he hoped and prayed so with all his heart and soul.
Just the same a cold lump of lead formed in his chest and came up to
lodge fast in his throat no matter how much he swallowed to get it back
down.
"If only Freddy were with me!" he sighed as he swung his Hell Cat on
course, and gave the Pratt & Whitney in the nose every ounce of high
octane it would take. "Blindfolded, that guy can find any spot in the
world just so long as you give him wind direction, or something. Yeah,
if he were only here, but he isn't. This is strictly up to you, Captain
Dumb Dawson. And I do mean dumb, too. You took so long to get this one
logical idea that maybe that Nazi rat is miles and miles on his way
there now. And when you show up you'll get a sky full of Jap Zeros
thrown in your face for your efforts. Oh well ... Aw, skip it!"
As though to silence the little taunting, ribbing voice, he banged his
free fist against the side of the cockpit. That done, he hunched forward
a little bit in the seat and concentrated every bit of his attention on
his flying. Eight hundred miles to Truk? Well, a Hell Cat can do four
hundred miles an hour plus. So in a little under two hours he would be
there, and ... it would be yes, or no. Success or failure. And if it was
failure, it would be complete failure for him. There would be no turning
back to the carrier force with his tail between his legs. There just
wasn't enough gas in his tanks for that. If he didn't find the Nazi rat
in time, and if he didn't get shot down by Zeros that certainly must be
patrolling the Truk area, he would run out of gas and be forced into
enemy waters.
"And that will be the same as being shot down, and maybe worse!" he said
with a slight shudder as the thought forced its way into his brain.
"Wouldn't those Jap butchers love to find a Yank pilot floating around
in his rubber life raft! Wouldn't they just love _that_! A nice little
pleasant session of target practice, and then ... Cut it, Dawson! Cut
it, fellow, or you'll be driving yourself bats, do you hear?"
He laughed a dry laugh at his ranting words, and then sobered instantly.
He happened to glance impulsively off to his left and for the fleeting
part of a second he thought he saw the shadowy silhouette of another
plane sliding along through the pinkness that fused and engulfed
everything. But when he took a second and longer look there was nothing
but a limitless expanse of cloud and fog.
At the end of a half-hour or so the fog beneath him thinned out
considerably. He could see faint patches of the Pacific. And then after
ten minutes of that the fog disappeared entirely. Rather it rose up to
merge with the clouds and leave an area of clear air some five hundred
feet high, and the horizon-to-horizon reaches of the mighty Southwest
Pacific at the bottom.
Holding the Hell Cat to its course Dawson scanned the surface of the
water in all directions, but he did not see a single sign of a ship. Nor
did he see any planes when he searched the area of clear air all about
him. He was still alone in a world of his own, and for a couple of
minutes he toyed with the idea of climbing above the clouds, just in
case the fleeing Nazi had done that, and he might be able to spot him.
He finally killed off that idea, though, for the principal reason that
it would slow down his speed, and he did not have to have anybody tell
him that speed right now was the most precious thing in his life.
Speed and time. The two things that can change the whole course of the
world. And which have many times, as history will prove. Right now,
they hung in the balance again. At least for him. The speed of his
roaring Hell Cat. And the time it would take him to get to the Truk area
so that he might cut that Nazi rat down into the depths of the Pacific
to stay there for all eternity. And so that the information he was
taking to one Admiral Shimoda might be food for the fishes, too.
"And there won't be any little item of him getting me, instead," Dawson
grated softly, as a little inner voice seemed to mention that
possibility. "I've never scrapped him in the air, but he's one guy I
_know_ I can nail. I know it, because I know I've _got_ to! So that's
how it stands, Lady Luck. Just give me the break of being able to catch
up with him, and then leave the rest to me. Swell-headed and cocky?
Okay, so I am! But let me at him and I'll get him, just the same!"
Those and other tidbits of thought rambled through his brain and came
off his lips as he guided his Hell Cat forward under the low-hanging
overcast. This was the flight of flights for him. It was, because even
if he won he would still lose as far as his own life was concerned. Even
if he shot the Nazi spy down into the Pacific he himself would soon
follow the rat down there. Not because he had been hit, or wanted to.
Because he would have no choice. There would not be any gas left in his
plane. And all the guts and courage in the world; all the fighting
spirit and will-to-win determination that ever existed, cannot make an
airplane stay in the air when the last drop of gas has been sucked into
the engine. The age-old law of gravity comes into full force then, and
down you go whether you like it or not.
"Okay, I go down, so what?" he argued with his other self. "What does it
matter, if I've already sent that rat down where he belongs? A fellow
can't live forever, can he? All right, so why cry over it when your time
comes? Didn't some great man once say that the most beautiful experience
in life is death? Didn't...?"
He cut off the rest with a slow shake of his head, pushed up his
goggles, and drew his free hand across his eyes.
"When a guy starts talking to himself this way, he must be going nuts,"
he grunted. "Boy! Do I wish old Freddy were here with me to steady me a
little, like he's done so many times. Good old Freddy! I wonder where he
is, now? Did he go back to the Trenton when the recall went out? Or is
he...?"
He stopped and swallowed hard. Sure, why not? Freddy had brains. Twice
as many brains as he had about lots of things. It wouldn't be any
miracle for Freddy Farmer to figure the situation out the same way he
had, and to be doing the very same thing that he was doing right now.
And as that thought built itself up stronger and stronger in his brain
he searched the clear air about him again. But he saw nothing. If Freddy
Farmer, too, was winging all out toward the Truk area, then he was
somewhere up in those clouds.
No sooner had he figured that one out than two brand-new thoughts rushed
into his swirling brain to taunt him, and cause little beads of nervous
sweat to form on his face. Supposing Freddy Farmer by some miracle had
stumbled across that fleeing Nazi and slammed him down, just as a
marksman such as Freddy could do? If so, then _he_ was simply flying to
his death by drowning, or ultimate capture by the Japs, for no earthly
good reason.
That wasn't a pleasant thought, and it sent a clammy shiver rippling
throughout his body. And the other new thought made him shiver all the
more. Supposing--just supposing this cursed cloud weather carried all
the way to Truk? Supposing the Nazi spy stayed up in it until he was
well within the protective ring of Truk's Zeros? If that turned out to
be the case, he wouldn't get a crack at that rat in a hundred years. Ten
to one that Nazi knew some secret radio signal he could send out to tell
the Japs who was approaching and not to attack simply because it was a
Yank plane. Supposing ...
And right then and there Dave Dawson stopped his supposing about things.
In fact, he stopped thinking of all crazy things. The clouds above him
suddenly ceased abruptly. The Pacific ahead suddenly became as though on
fire from the dying rays of the setting sun. It was like flying out from
under a huge pink roof. He came out like a shot from a gun, and almost
in the same instant he saw a flash of red ... a flash of sparkling
crimson caused by the sun rays dancing off the wings of a plane way off
to his right and perhaps two or three thousand feet above him.
The Nazi rat, or Freddy Farmer? That question burned in letters of fire
a foot high in his brain, as he banked his Hell Cat to the right, and
sent it nosing upward.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
_Kismet_
Never before had Dave Dawson been so eager, so all on fire, to establish
the identity of a sighted plane as he was now. Every nerve and muscle in
his entire body became tensed, and actually ached from the strain. Time
and time again, as the prop clawed his Hell Cat upward and to the right,
he shoved up his goggles and dashed his free hand across his tired eyes
as though by so doing he would improve his vision.
Truth to tell, under any other conditions he would have been able to get
a clear view of the plane even before he started to climb toward it. But
the position of the dying sun, the glossy red surface of the Southwest
Pacific below him, and the tiny patches of cloud that still hung in the
sky were all against him. They all worked to distort the distant plane
into all kinds of shapes and outlines. It was something like trying to
study a fly through red-colored glasses as the fly circled about a
brilliant white light. One instant he would almost see it clearly, and
the next it would seem to fade from view altogether, and send his
pounding heart racing up into his throat.
"That Nazi rat, or you, Freddy?" he muttered aloud. "And forgive me,
Freddy, but I hope that it isn't you. Because if it is you, fellow, then
we have lost. He'd have to be out in the open now. So if that ship is
yours, Freddy, it can't mean anything else but that he is way out in
front of us, and too close to Truk for us ever to hope to get him. You
see ..."
But Dawson didn't finish the rest of that sentence. It was as though a
thin curtain had been pulled across the face of the setting sun. A
mighty shadow pushed eastward across the face of the world, and there
was considerably less blinding crimson light. The plane, now little more
than half a mile away, and less than a thousand feet above Dawson's
aircraft, stood out sharp and clear. And the plane was a U.S. Navy Hell
Cat.
"The markings, the markings!" Dawson breathed, and strained his eyes
hard to see something besides the sharp, clear silhouette of the other
plane. "Is it F Dash Fourteen? Or Freddy's number F Dash Twenty? Please
make it Fourteen, Lady Luck! If you never give me another good break,
please give me just this one. Make it Fourteen, please!"
Five, ten, fifteen seconds ticked by. They seemed as years in length to
Dawson. Cannons boomed in his brain, and he felt pins and needles in his
veins, not blood. He wanted to shout and yell at the top of his voice.
He wanted to do anything that would make it possible for him to see the
identification markings on that other plane. The urge was great to let
fly a few blasts from his fifty-caliber guns to attract the attention of
the other pilot, but with an effort he fought down that urge.
If the Nazi was flying that other Hell Cat, it would be the worst thing
in the world for Dawson to fire his guns. At least at this early moment.
It would be bad because the other Hell Cat was still some distance away
and slightly in front of Dawson's plane. In other words, there was still
time for the pilot of that other plane, if he was the Nazi, to keep a
safe distance from Dawson and outrun him to the protection of Zeros from
Truk.
No, this was a cat-and-mouse play. If that was Freddy Farmer then this
stealing up unnoticed was a waste of time. But if it was the Nazi then
this maneuver was the best bet in Dawson's bag of air fighting tricks.
Right! Get in close, and make sure. Make sure, and then tear in for the
kill. And a kill it would be, if that pilot was the Nazi.
"Steady, guy, steady!" Dawson murmured as his nerves began to twang like
harp strings. "No matter who it is you'll find out soon. So don't
overplay it, fellow. If it's him, then this will be your last chance. No
more chances after this one. No. This is the pay-off, the old make or
break. The ..."
Perhaps Lady Luck smiled upon Dave Dawson at that moment, but most
likely it was the result of action by the other pilot. At any rate, the
other Hell Cat veered slightly toward the south and the rays of the
dying sun played full upon the side of the fuselage. And like magic the
plane's markings stood out in bold relief. The markings, F Dash
Fourteen!
"You, it _is_ you!" Dawson panted, and slid his thumb up to the stick
button that controlled the electric firing of his gun. "It is you, and
I've got you cold. Cold as a chunk of Arctic ice!"
The gods of war in their high places thought differently at that
instant. Even as Dawson's thumb started to press down on the trigger
button the other Hell Cat swerved sharply and cut right out of the Yank
air ace's sights. True, the maneuver brought the Nazi even closer. In
fact, that one maneuver sort of put the two aircraft on even terms. That
is to say, the Nazi no longer had any safety lead over Dawson's plane.
Neither could outfly the other on the flat, now, unless one of the
engines went bad.
"Okay by me, chump!" Dawson grated as he relaxed thumb pressure on the
gun button. "Make the turn and ..."
And right then and there the Nazi proved that his maneuver had a
purpose. It proved that he had, for some time at least, been aware of
the fact that Dawson was sneaking up on him. In other words, the Nazi's
swerve was not to change course toward the Truk area. On the contrary it
was a deliberate air battle tactic. A swerve to the left, and then
suddenly the Nazi came spinning around and down like a flame-spitting
demon from Satan's domain.
A far less experienced pilot than Dawson would have died then and there.
He would have died, hardly realizing what had hit him.
Too many, many times, though, had Dawson scrapped with the best that the
Nazis or the Japs had to offer not to be able to react instinctively to
approaching danger. Thus it was, and almost before the thing had become
a thought in his brain, he pulled up straight for the sky in the nick of
time. The Nazi's withering fire missed him.
At the speed the diving Nazi was traveling it was impossible for him to
haul up his nose and get a new bead on Dawson's zooming ship. As a
result he undershot his target and went cutting down across the sky.
"Which makes me top man now!" Dawson yelled, and kicked his Hell Cat
over and down. "And I kind of like that. Now, wiggle and squirm, you
rat. Let me see you twist away from these little things."
Thundering down almost at the vertical, he lined up the other Hell Cat
and let go with all of his guns. That is, almost all of his guns.
Something was wrong with two of them, and they did not fire. The others,
however, did their stuff. And with grim satisfaction Dawson saw his
tracers chew into the tail of the Nazi's plane. It wasn't enough,
though. The Hell Cat is a very, very tough ship. It can absorb all kinds
of punishment, and the Nazi's Hell Cat was no exception to the rule.
Dave Dawson saw it stagger a little in the air, but before he could
correct his aim the Nazi was prop clawing upward and around to the left.
"Not enough, huh?" Dawson gritted, and hauled out of his own dive to
follow through the Nazi's maneuver. "Well, I'm just the guy who can give
you more. Like _this_!"
He was not in position for a tail shot then. The Nazi had pulled out too
fast, and his Hell Cat was not letting him down. As a matter of fact,
though, it was the kind of a shot that Dawson liked best of all. A rear
quarter shot that would permit him to rake the other plane from prop to
tail before its pilot could do anything to get out of the way.
The Nazi pilot seemed to sense that truth, and there was no reason he
shouldn't sense it in view of the fact that he had been flying as a
dirty Nazi spy in Uncle Sam's Navy. Anyway, he belted his plane hard
over on wing and tried to whip it down to the vertical. But Dawson
followed right through and pressed his trigger button. And it was then
that it happened!
Rather, it was then that it _didn't_ happen!
With the Nazi cold meat in his sights, not a one of Dawson's guns fired
a shot. Maybe it was that a stray bullet from the Nazi's opening burst
had hit something that threw the firing mechanism out of whack. Maybe it
was for any one of a hundred different reasons. The cold hard fact was
that not one of his guns spoke its piece. And in the next split second
the Nazi was out of his sights and in the clear.
During that brief split second Dawson's brain seemed to freeze solid in
unbelievable horror. Yet instinct was at work again. Instinct that made
him try every way he knew to get his guns working. But it was all in
vain. The joke was on him, and the war gods up in their high places were
screaming with insane glee.
"No! Oh, no!"
From countless miles away Dawson's own sobbing words echoed back to him.
His heart was lead in his stomach, and his head was filled with the
flames of an all-consuming rage. Yet with all that he did not give up
the ghost and just let his Hell Cat roar down across the sky. The Nazi
did not know that his guns had gone out on him. Ten to one the Nazi
simply thought that he had kicked his own plane out of the line of fire,
and so Dawson had saved his bullets for another try.
At any rate Dawson did not give up. He was made of better stuff than
that. Gunless though he was, he still had the advantage of position. He
had the Nazi on the defensive, and as long as _he_ could keep the
offensive he had not truly lost.
"And after all, I've still got one trick left!" he said hoarsely. "One
trick that will stop you from reaching Truk, so help me!"
As though the Nazi pilot had actually heard the words, the other Hell
Cat zoomed for altitude in a pilot's trick to cut the corner and drop
down from above. Dawson was not to be tricked by that one, however. He
zoomed himself, and prevented the Nazi from cutting in behind. The Nazi
tried it again in the opposite direction, but Dawson stayed right with
him, and even improved his position in relation to the Nazi's plane.
But it couldn't last, and no one knew it better than Dave Dawson. A half
dozen times he got the Nazi in a cold meat position, and was helpless to
do anything about it. And by then the Nazi knew, or could make a pretty
good guess as to what was what. As a matter of fact, in the very next
moment the movements of the Nazi's plane proved what was going through
the pilot's head. The Nazi started to zoom up off to the left, and then
deliberately cut off the zoom and flew right smack across Dawson's
sights. Hot tears of rage almost blinded Dave as he saw the Nazi's Hell
Cat sail by looking as big as a battleship. The greenest pilot ever to
fire an aerial machine gun could not have missed that target completely.
It was then that the Nazi pilot knew for certain, and as his helmeted
head was turned Dawson's way for an instant Dave thought he saw the
other's face flame up in a look of mad triumph. Dave thought he saw that
look, but it might have been his imagination. To tell the truth, his
whole attention was on something else. The time to lose or win had
arrived. He had fooled the Nazi as long as he could. By his flying he
had made the Nazi wonder a little, and then wonder more and more until
the Hitlerite took a chance to find out for sure. He did find out, and
he probably thought that victory was his now. He could swing away and go
on to Truk without danger. Or he could first stick around and polish off
this gunless American who had intercepted him.
Yes, perhaps the Nazi thought all those things as he sailed by the front
of Dawson's nose and received not a single bullet. But what he probably
did not realize was that his instant of mad triumph was Dawson's moment
for a last desperate gamble. A gamble in which one and perhaps both
could lose.
"Make the most of it, rat! Here I come!"
Words? Had he spoken them? Or had they simply been the echo of a thought
racing through his whirling spinning brain? Dawson didn't know, and he
didn't care. He wasn't thinking of anything, now. That time had passed.
The time had passed for everything save for mad, furious, smashing
action that would stop this Nazi from reaching the Truk area, and rob
Admiral Shimoda forever of what he was now probably waiting for with
gleaming eyes and drooling mouth.
In the next split second a hundred and one things loomed up large in
Dawson's brain. He saw the Nazi's marking F Dash Fourteen stretched up
tall as a house. He saw the color of the fuselage with the last rays of
the sun dancing off its smooth surface. He saw the Nazi's Hell Cat start
to swerve violently. He saw its nose drop down and its tail kick up. He
saw the Nazi turn his head and saw him impulsively fling up one arm. He
really saw this time the look of wild terror that flooded the Nazi's
face.
"Nope! You still lose!"
Like a soothing, comforting whisper those words filtered back to Dave
Dawson. And then he slammed his Hell Cat over on left wing, and kicked
top rudder with every ounce of his strength. For the infinitesimal part
of a split second his plane and the Nazi's plane seemed to hang
motionless in mid-air. And then his lower wing sliced against the Nazi's
fuselage and cockpit hatch.
He knew that, because he saw it in the fraction of time allowed. And
then all the furies of land, sea, and air exploded all about him. All
the colors of the rainbow surged into his brain in brilliant balls that
blew up in a terrific crescendo of sound. Ten thousand spears of fire
pierced every square inch of his body. And demons with red hot sledge
hammers pounded their way down into his brain.