eager for battle, he was now filled with a sense of caution. For one
thing, what was a Nazi ME 109 doing over the Atlas Mountains? Was it
close to its base--the same base used by the mysterious Junkers
bombers--or was the pilot lost and wandering about in the North African
heavens hundreds and hundreds of miles from where he should be? And for
another thing, why hadn't the Nazi spotted him? Was the pilot dead, and
was 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?" Dawson
muttered the next thought aloud, and stared at the other plane that was
now circling slowly about in the air. "Is he waiting for me to come
piling in, because he has some special surprise package waiting, or
what?"
As he mulled over the question in an effort to guess at an answer that
might be close to the truth, the Yank air ace searched the surrounding
skies. However, if he expected to see any other planes in the heavens,
he was doomed to disappointment. As far as he could see in every
direction there was nothing but sun-tinted blue North African sky and a
few 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, but
don't realize it. Well, one German less is one German less, I always
say. 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 his
coasting around and had swung onto a course due south at an increased
speed. And though Dawson gaped and stared in amazement, he let no "sky
grass" grow under his feet. He instantly swung south and opened up his
two Allison engines, but continued to maintain his altitude of some
three thousand feet below the other plane.
For a full five minutes, the Nazi rocketed south with Dawson some two
miles behind him and holding steadily to the pace. At the end of that
five minutes, though, the Messerschmitt reached the edges of one of the
towering mountains of clouds in the sky. Impulsively, Dave opened his
throttles so that he would not lose the Messerschmitt in the clouds. The
action was unnecessary for the German pilot swerved to the east just
before he came to the clouds. Once again his abrupt change of speed
showed that he had eased back to throttle cruising.
Anger took the place of amazement in Dawson, and he was on the point of
slamming up to give battle to the Messerschmitt, when suddenly twelve
Junkers 88 long-range bombers came sliding out from under the mountain
of cloud, looking for all the world as though they were rolling their
wheels across the peaks of the Atlas Mountains.
So suddenly and so weirdly did they appear that for a second or so
Dawson was unable to realize what they were. When truth came to him, he
sat up stiff and straight in the seat and let out a yell of excited
relief.
"Goering's Snoopers!" Dave cried. "There they are, the bums, as sure as
shooting! And on their way back to their base. No doubt of it, and, so
help me, that Messerschmitt must be some kind of a lone escort come out
to 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 flight
south, so he must have crossed their path. He--!"
He cut his own words off abruptly as a squealing noise sounded in his
earphones. It rose and fell, and rose and fell again. Although he worked
furiously over the tuning knobs of his panel set, he could get nothing
but the squeal's. That is, nothing but squeals for the next minute or
two. Then, suddenly, the squealing sound stopped, and a single spoken
word came through as clear as a bell.
"Noswad!"
That single word made Dave's heart pound furiously, because it was his
own last name spelled backwards; because it was the signal call Freddy
Farmer was to use when getting in radio contact with him. No sooner had
he heard the code call spoken once, than the squealing sound filled his
ears again. Whether it was Freddy's set or his that had gone haywire, he
could not tell at the moment. He simply put his lips to his own mike and
shouted 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 his
earphones. Once again he called Freddy, but the result was the same.
Impulsively, he checked his own set as best he could, but found nothing
wrong with it. As a matter of fact, to make definitely sure that his own
set was in perfect working order, he sent out a signal call to
Casablanca Base and instantly received a reply that came in loud and
clear.
"So that settles that," he grunted. "Freddy's set has gone haywire. He
probably picked up those Snoopers long ago and hasn't been able to
contact me up to now. He's around. I can't see him, but he must be
around somewhere doing his job of trailing those Snoopers back to their
base. 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 was
alive and still flying, Dawson left his set tuned as fine as possible
and gave all of his attention to the Messerschmitt-led air cavalcade of
Junkers 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 was
to throttle to their speed and hug the sides of the cloud banks. True,
there was a small chance that he might be sighted, silhouetted against
the clouds as he was, but that was the chance he had to take. If he was
sighted, he knew that it would be the Messerschmitt 109 that would turn
back to drive him off, and so he kept his gaze on that plane and paid
little or no attention to the bombers.
Eastward and then southward the Nazi planes flew, and then at the end of
some thirty-five minutes, they changed their course to the east again,
and then northward. Most of the Atlas Range was out of sight now. Ahead
lay barren country that looked as though nothing, not even a blade of
grass, had ever lived there. Farther ahead was the border line between
Morocco 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. These
barren lands of the western rim of the Sahara Desert seemed to shimmer
and tremble in the blistering heat of the sun. Even the banks of clouds
were gone now. They had been left over the Atlas Mountains, and the sun
blazing down made Dawson's throttles feel like red hot pokers, despite
the fact that he was some twelve thousand feet in the air.
As a matter of fact, the constant glare of the sun, and the intense
concentration on the Nazi formation ahead and below him strained his
eyes to the utmost, and he began to see crazy objects and shapes that
were no longer there when he took a second look.
It was because of this that he paid little or no attention to a
gray-green blur that appeared on the barren earth just ahead of the Nazi
planes. That is, he gave it scant attention until he suddenly realized
that the Nazi pilots had cut their throttles, and in follow-the-leader
style were circling around and down toward that gray-green blurr.
Shoving up his goggles, he dug knuckles into his smarting eyes, then
impulsively leaned forward as though that bit of movement would afford
him a better look.
But whether or not it did, he certainly saw more than he had the first
time. The gray-green blur was a small group of shrub-covered hills that
rose right up out of the desert. That it was some kind of an oasis was
evident by the patches of pale green here and there.
One thing was definite, however. To Dawson it was the only thing that
mattered. That gray-green patch on the seemingly limitless expanse of
shimmering and quivering Sahara was the secret base of Goering's
Snoopers! He had found it! There it was! The first two of the bombers
were already on the ground on the eastern fringe of the gray-green
patch. 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 shiver
went through him, and his joy was tempered by cold, hard reality. He had
fuel for about another half hour in the air. Fuel enough to take him a
fraction of the distance back to his Casablanca base. What he had
expected had happened, but only now did the full significance of it
descend upon him.
"But we found it!" he shouted wildly as he put his lips to his flap mike
and reached out to tune his set to the Casablanca Base wave length. "And
that's what matters most. Now to tell Casablanca and--"
At that moment Dawson's ears were filled with the savage yammer of
aerial machine guns and air cannon, above and behind him!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
_Blazing Doom_
One, two, three seconds slipped by before Dawson could move a single
muscle. It was as though invisible hands of steel held him powerless.
Only his eyes and brain seemed able to function in that short space of
time. His eyes saw the top left section of his glass hatch melt away as
if by magic. His brain told him the shambles that was suddenly made of
his instrument board and radio panel would never in all this world
permit him to contact his Casablanca base. The golden moment had
come--and gone.
Keeping alive was his prime concern now. The Grim Reaper was savagely
striving to cut life short for one Yank air ace!
In three seconds Dave Dawson became a flying madman. Instinct, and
instinct alone, caused him to whirl the Lockheed up, over, and down in a
half roll. Hardly had he started the maneuver, than he kicked the ship
over on wing and came around back and straight up toward the sun-filled
sky. Not until he had reached the peak of his power zoom did he take so
much as a second for a look around. But now he did race his eyes about
the sky, and rage boiled up within him as he saw three German
Messerschmitt 109's pulling out of furious power dives, and prop clawing
around and up in an effort to "box" him in a perfect cross fire.
"Not today!" he thundered wildly, and dropped the nose of his Lockheed.
"You had one swell chance, because I was too dumb a sap to think of
keeping eyes in the back of my head. That's the only chance you'll get.
You didn't make good, and now it's my turn. Hey! You there on the right!
How do you like _this_ for a tasty dish?"
As he shouted the words, he touched right rudder a bit and slammed down
almost at the vertical, straight for one of the power-zooming
Messerschmitts. The German pilot must have thought that ramming was the
one idea Dawson had in mind, because the Nazi plane suddenly fell over
on its side and started to circle away to avoid a mid-air crash. But
ramming was not Dawson's idea. No, not while he had slugs for his aerial
machine guns and shells for his air cannon. However, he waited until the
last second before he gave the Nazi aircraft everything the Lockheed
had. The almost instantaneous result indicated that it was much, much
more than enough. One minute the Messerschmitt was curving away, and the
next it just wasn't there any more. That is to say, it was just a shower
of flaming and smoking embers falling away to the sun-scorched Sahara
far below.
"One!" Dawson bellowed, and cut his fire.
Yes, one! And that left two others in the sky. However, those two were
crafty veterans of the _Luftwaffe_, and they had not been wasting time.
Nor had their actions been with the idea of getting away from the wild,
mad flying Yank eagle. On the contrary, they had simply maneuvered to
await their time. And that time came as Dawson cut his fire and started
to wheel up out of his thunderous power dive.
As he started up, those two let fly at him. Maybe both hit the mark, or
maybe one of them missed completely. But what did it matter? The mark
was hit, and the "mark" was Dawson's plane. The air all about him seemed
suddenly alive with tracer smoke, and the Lockheed Lightning acted as
though it was about to fly right out from under Dave. He was hurled back
against the headrest with a force that filled his head with winking
stars. Then the Lockheed whipped up over on its back, dropped its nose
and headed straight down like a meteor gone berserk. Thunder roared in
his ears, and before his eyes exploded and flashed all the color
combinations in the world. In his nose was the acrid stench of smoke.
"Your turn, this time, pal!" he heard his own voice shout, as he went
hurtling downward. "No! No, it isn't, darn it! _You're_ not hit.
_You're_ okay! Hit the silk, you dope! Bail out! Hit the silk! If you--"
He choked off the rest, or rather fear choked off his words, as he
suddenly heard the renewed bursts of savage aerial machine-gun fire. His
ship shot to ribbons, and falling to earth in flames, yet those two Nazi
vultures were still pumping death at him.
"But why not?" he reasoned. "They're Nazis, aren't they? What else would
you expect these killing rats to do?"
Even as the thought slipped across his brain, a new one crowded close on
its heels. Rather, it was a realization. The realization that there was
not one bit of pain in his body as he struggled to free himself from the
burning Lockheed. And also that no ribbons of tracer smoke were cutting
past him. So what were the Nazis shooting at? At each other, or--
Before he could finish the question he had managed to fight his way up
out of the pit, and dived headlong into sun-filled thin air. But it was
not his own movements that stopped his unfinished thought. On the
contrary, it was the sight of a wingless Messerschmitt 109 hurtling down
to its doom about three hundred yards from where his own body seemed to
hang in mid air.
"Hey!" he gasped. "Did I get another one? Did I get two, and I'm just
finding out? But how the--"
And he didn't finish that question either. He didn't, because at that
exact instant the gods of war, as though angered by the fact that he
still lived, tried one last time to finish him off. At any rate, at that
exact moment a piece of his riddled Lockheed Lightning flew off.
Straight and true as a ball pitcher's perfect strike it cut across the
air space toward him. He actually saw it coming out of the corner of his
eye, and he tried to duck as his body slowly tumbled end over end
downward. But he didn't succeed in ducking, or he didn't duck in time.
Something hit him a smashing blow on the side of his head, and the
entire North African sky blew up in a thunderous roar of sound!
When consciousness returned to Dawson his first hazy impression was that
he was floating about in the middle of a great sea of black ink. But no,
not everything was that black. At regular intervals a faint yellowish
orange glow appeared before his eyes. But before he could get a good
look at it the glow faded away out of sight. Instinctively he tried to
get his brain to function; to get it to figure out what everything was
all about. However, for a long time he somehow just couldn't force his
brain to make that effort. He simply lived in a world of hazy snatches
of thought, and inky darkness lighted now and then by a yellowish orange
glow.
Eventually, as though secret curtains had been pulled away inside his
head, memory came slipping back, and he began to discover and realize
things. The first realization was that he was hanging suspended in
mid-air and slowly swaying this way and that. The second realization was
that the darkness was the darkness of night. The third realization was
that there was a dull throbbing on the left side of his head. And the
fourth, and perhaps the most important realization of all, was that he
was dangling at the ends of the shroud lines of his parachute, which was
hopelessly fouled in the crooked and gnarled branches of a scrub tree.
By throwing his head way back he could look upward and see his fouled
'chute and the tree branches silhouetted against the billions of stars
that twinkled at him from high overhead. And when he looked down he saw
that rocky ground was not over three feet from the soles of his flying
boots.
That realization filled him with great joy, but it also made him gulp,
and caused beads of cold sweat to break out on his forehead. Never as
long as he lived would he be able to remember that he actually had
pulled the rip-cord ring of his parachute whether or not that flying bit
of Lockheed wreckage caught him on the side of the head. But he must
have done that little thing, and by the grace of God and Lady Luck he
had not been allowed to strike ground while still unconscious. To have
done so, to have hit ground without being prepared for the landing
shock would unquestionably have resulted in a couple of broken ankles,
if not legs. Particularly because of the rocky soil under him. However,
one chance in a billion had come to pass, and his journey earthward had
been checked in the nick of time by the crooked and gnarled branches of
the scrub tree.
"Or maybe it's just a dream!" he whispered hoarsely as he fumbled at the
snaps of his parachute harness. "Maybe it's just a cockeyed dream, and
I'm going to wake up stone dead!"
The words he spoke, however, were just a means of letting off pent up
steam. He got the 'chute harness snaps undone, grabbed the straps with
both hands and slowly lowered himself until his feet touched solid
earth. However, his body had experienced so much swaying motion that his
sense of balance was all upset. And no sooner did his feet touch, and
had he let go of the harness straps, than he fell stumbling down onto
his hands and knees, and his brain started to spin furiously.
For the next few moments he was content to sit on the solid earth and
wait for his brain to stop spinning and for fresh strength to flow back
into his body. Then finally he slowly arose and peered about in the
darkness. Just where he had come to earth he hadn't the faintest idea,
but it seemed a good guess that he must be somewhere in the region of
that weird group of shrub-covered hills that marked the spot where he
had seen those Junkers 88's go down to land. That guess caused countless
little fears to start pecking at his brain. How close to that secret
base was he? How come he had been left hanging unconscious on his
parachute shroud lines for the rest of the day? Where was Freddy Farmer?
Had Freddy really been trailing those bombers, too? Had he reported the
location to Casablanca base? Or was his radio truly dead, and did
Casablanca base still not know the truth? What time was it, anyway? Had
he been unconscious for just a few hours? Or had it been for a day and a
night, and had Goering's Snoopers already roared out from their hidden
base to do their devilish dirty work?
Those and countless other soul-tantalizing questions whipped and spun
through his head as he searched about him in the gloom. Suddenly he
spotted the yellowish-orange glow once again. He judged it to be perhaps
a mile away, but he was unable to see the base of the glow because of a
rise in the ground. After one good look, though, he knew that it was
flame. Rather, a column of flame-tinted smoke that rose upward into the
night sky. Having seen that same sort of sight at night in other parts
of the world, he was pretty sure that the yellowish-orange glow was from
the burning wreckage of a plane.
"Mine, or that Nazi I nailed?" he asked himself the question aloud.
"Or--Hey! I remember, now! _Two_ Nazis went down, and I know darn well
that I only got one of them. I--"
He stopped short, caught his breath and held it as though not daring to
let himself speak.
"Freddy?" the whisper finally came out from between his stiff lips. "Was
it Freddy who piled down and nailed that second Nazi? But--But what
then? Where did he go? What did he do? I know he didn't have fuel to get
back to Casablanca, but if _only_ his radio worked, and he was able to
tell them the story! Please, dear God, let Freddy have made good where
I--I failed."
For a long minute he stood there motionless as though waiting for the
answer to his question to come drifting down through the night air.
Suddenly his hand flew to his holstered service gun, and he whirled
around and down in a crouch. Behind him, he had heard the crackling snap
of dry twigs, followed by the rattle of loose stones hitting together,
and the faint thud of something falling to the ground.
With his finger crooked about the trigger, and his heart trying to
slam-bang its way out through his ribs, he waited for more sound. And
when it came to him, he didn't know whether to shout with insane joy, or
to break into crazy laughter. He didn't know which to do because the
sound he heard was a human voice; a hoarse whispering voice that was
filled with seething anger. A voice that said:
"Blast, and eternally blast this confounded darkness!"
For five full seconds Dawson was utterly unable to unhinge his frozen
tongue. The one-in-a-billion miracle left him completely speechless. It
seemed to knock everything out of his head and make all so unreal and
fantastic as to be absolutely impossible as an actuality.
"Freddy! Freddy Farmer!" the words finally forced their way past his
lips. "Freddy! Can you hear me? Over here, Freddy! Over here!"
As his voice died away to an echo, a tingling moment of silence settled
over everything. Then once again he heard Freddy Farmer's voice, like a
ghost voice from out out of the past.
"Dave, Dave! Keep talking, old chap! I'll follow the sound of your
voice. Dave, old thing, are you all right? Don't move, Dave! Just keep
talking! I'll follow the sound of your voice!"
"I'm okay, Freddy!" Dawson replied as hot tears of inexpressible joy
stung his eyes. "And, pal, this is the biggest moment of all, past,
present, and future. I'm over this way, kid. I can hear you now. Over
here, Freddy! Gosh, oh gosh! Am I glad to--"
He never finished the sentence because at that moment a darker shadow
than the night suddenly materialized at his side, and in the next
instant the two air aces were hugging and thumping each other and
mumbling a lot of things that neither of them heard, much less paid
attention to. Finally, though, they ceased the greeting act and calmed
down.
"Man, Dave!" Freddy Farmer panted. "I thought I'd never reach you. A
thousand times I swore I was lost and heading in the wrong direction.
Phew! What absolutely unbelievable luck! I'll never forget this as long
as I live. Not ever, I swear it!"
"You and me both, Freddy!" Dave echoed the statement. "But look! You
were trailing those bombers? And it was you who nailed that
Messerschmitt right after I started down in a heap, and--But wait! Tell
me this, first. Your radio was okay, wasn't it? And you notified
Casablanca base, didn't you?"
The air came out between young Farmer's lips in a whistling gasp, and he
grabbed hold of Dawson's arm.
"Dave!" he choked out. "Dave! You mean _you_ didn't let them know?"
Dawson was unable to answer for a moment. His whole body seemed to turn
into a solid chunk of ice so that he could hardly breathe. It required a
tremendous effort to get the words off his lips.
"No, Freddy," he said. "Just as I started to tune in Casablanca, that
Messerschmitt bunch gave me the works and shot my set into splinters.
Then--then your radio _was_ out? I tried to raise you several times, but
couldn't."
"The blasted thing went haywire after I'd been in the air only fifteen
minutes," the English youth replied. "I had half a mind to turn back to
Casablanca, but I didn't dare for fear the Junkers might be down my way.
They were. I sighted them coming in over Magador. They were hugging the
clouds. I gave them a few miles and then tagged along. I tried to raise
you, but I didn't get any answer, so I just carried on. About an hour
later I spotted you trailing a Messerschmitt. I tried to rise you again,
but still no answer. Then when we got close to here I saw those three
Messerschmitts drop down on you. I was above the lot of you, so I saw
everything. Man! I thought I'd die when you did nothing, and just let
them come down!"
"Dumb ape that I am," Dawson said bitterly, "I was so interested in
watching the Junkers that I didn't think to keep an eye on my tail. I
heard your call once, Freddy, though I couldn't spot you. You did get
one of them, huh?"