CHAPTER EIGHT

_Screaming Death_

FOR PERHAPS TEN full seconds Dave stared brittle-eyed at those two moving dots. Then he took his eyes off them and looked at the Cub cabin monoplane. The little craft was doing its best to keep pace with the Air Corps plane, and its pilot was still waving his arm out the window and trying to make his screamed words of pleading carry across the air space that separated the two planes. As Dave looked at him he suddenly realized that he had been automatically swerving the Vultee to the left. This was because the Cub pilot kept swerving in a little too close for comfort, and Dave wasn’t taking any chances of a mid air tangle of wings.

But now that he had seen those two moving dots, the Cub pilot’s maneuvering meant something entirely different. Without appearing to do so, the Cub pilot was forcing the Vultee eastward and toward a point directly under those two moving dots high in the air. Dave grinned faintly, but a steel hard look crept into his eyes. He suddenly turned his head toward the Cub pilot and nodded it violently. Then he cupped both hands to his mouth.

“Okay!” he roared, “Get out in front and lead the way!”

The Cub pilot stopped waving instantly, and his face beamed with gratitude. He gave his small engine all the power it could take and pulled out in front of the well throttled Vultee.

“I guess this is best, Dave!” Freddy said. “Might as well take a look, just in case, what?”

Dave waited until the Cub light plane was a good bit in front and bearing around to the east. Then he looked back at Freddy and winked.

“One up on you this time, sweetheart,” he said. “The old Farmer eagle eye missed the pitch this time. I think we’re in for a bit of action. Anyway, I kind of hope so. Take a gander up and to the east, Freddy. That darker bank of clouds. See what I mean? And they’re not a couple of sparrows, either. Can you make out the types?”

The English youth blinked, looked puzzled for a brief instant, then lifted his eyes and fixed them on the cloud bank. Dave, watching him, saw amazement and then anger flood Freddy’s face. When Farmer lowered his gaze his eyes were startlingly cold and hard.

“The dirty blighters, if that’s what they’re up to!” he bit off. “Get us started on a supposed mercy errand, and then try to drop down on our necks.”

“Try, is right!” Dave chuckled. “But we’ve seen them first. Okay, Freddy! There’re only two of them. Get set to teach somebody a little lesson he won’t be forgetting for a long time. We’ll let them come down close, but not too close. Look! They’re banking around and starting down. Well, knock me for a loop! A couple of Waco biplane speed jobs! Think we should go through with it, Freddy? Or should we pull out and tend to our own knitting?”

There was no answer from Freddy Farmer for a couple of seconds. Dave watched the two Wacos come rushing down in almost a vertical dive. Instinctively he slid his hand up the control stick and took off the safety catch of the firing button.

“Eh, what?” came Freddy Farmer’s sudden reply. “Pull off and leave the blighters? Leave them perhaps to get somebody else like poor Tracey? Not a bit of it, Dave. Let’s give it to the beggars, and give it to them good!”

“Words right out of my mouth!” Dave cried gayly. “And to make sure it’s no mistake, we’ll let them smack out the first burst. I still wonder where Colonel Welsh’s agent is. Too bad he’s going to miss this!”

“His hard luck,” Freddy grunted. “But he isn’t here, so he isn’t here, and that’s that. He--_On guard, Dave!_”

The last wasn’t necessary. Dawson hadn’t taken his eyes off the diving Wacos for so much as a split second. Even as Freddy yelled, he saw twin jetting streams of orange red flame come spurting out the nose of the leading plane. And in that same split second he slammed his weight on the Vultee’s controls and sent the Air Corps ship cartwheeling off to the left and up as though it had been slapped by a bolt of lightning.

So unexpected and so swift had been his maneuver that when he yanked the Vultee out of it a good thousand feet higher in the air, the two Wacos were still diving earthward and still spitting out bullets from all their guns. A harsh laugh rattled off Dave’s lips as he kicked rudder and dropped the nose a hair.

“Go back to flight training school, chumps!” he shouted. “Who do you think we are--a couple of two hour solo cadets? Here! Here are a few kisses from Uncle Sam!”

As Dave spoke the last he sticked the nearest of the two Wacos into his sights and jabbed the electric trigger button. His two forward fixed guns yammered out flame and sound, and the Waco suddenly acted as though its pilot had flown it straight into a meat grinder. The left wings came off clean as a whistle. The fuselage buckled in the middle, and smoke and flame belched out from under the engine cowling, and went whirling backward to envelop the plane completely. Dave watched it closely, but when no figure tumbled down out of that smoke to become a man dangling at the ends of parachute shroud lines, he shuddered slightly and licked his suddenly dry lips.

“Tough!” he muttered, “even if he is an Axis rat. But he asked for it. And he had the chance to get in the first licks, too!”

Hardly had the last left Dave’s lips before Freddy Farmer’s rear guns spoke their piece. The second Waco had come out of its wild dive, and its pilot--perhaps a little jarred by the sudden death of his flying mate--had tried the absolutely crazy maneuver of cutting around and getting in under the Vultee’s tail. With a sharp-shooter like Freddy Farmer, that maneuver was just about as sane an effort as stepping out a ten story window and trying to walk across the air to a building on the other side of the street.

The English youth’s rear guns slapped out no more than a two second burst each. But that was more than enough. It was as though a giant’s steel fist crashed down, and one ripped up, and the Waco were caught between the two. The biplane simply came apart at the seams and the pieces were showered all over the place. Unlike the other Waco pilot, however, the second Waco pilot managed to get away with his life. Both Dave and Freddy saw him arc out from the shower of wreckage as though shot from the mouth of a cannon. A moment later, though, as he went slowly spinning head over heels downward, a puff of white shot up past his head. And in another moment he was swinging like a clock’s pendulum at the ends of taut shroud lines. Dave glanced back at Freddy and nodded.

“Nice shooting, Freddy!” he cried. “Help yourself to a cigar, my little man!”

“You didn’t miss, yourself!” the English youth shouted back. Then, casting his eye down at the dangling parachutist, he muttered, “At times like this I almost wish I were a Nazi. Then I could do plain murder, and it wouldn’t come back to me in my dreams. That lucky blighter will probably be up to more dirty Axis business tomorrow.”

“No, not tomorrow!” Dave echoed as he stared downward. “He’s got one awful long walk out of those mountains. And if you must know how I feel about it, I kind of hope that he doesn’t make it, if you get what I mean.”

“I do,” Freddy said grimly. “And the feeling is mutual. I see that our light plane friend isn’t around. As soon as his work was completed he got away in a hurry. How about tooting around a bit to see if we can pick up the beggar? I’d at least like to give him the scare of his rotten life.”

“I’d like to give him just a little more than that!” Dave echoed as he cast his narrow-eyed gaze about the surrounding air. “But I guess we’ll have to pass up that little pleasure. I don’t see hide nor hair of him, and we’ve got places to go, anyway. Well, Freddy how’s for handing me that fur-lined propeller I won?”

“Fur what?” Farmer gasped. “What are you raving about?”

“Colonel Welsh’s tapped phone lines!” Dave said, and grinned at him. “Kind of close to being right, wasn’t I?”

“You modest blighter!” Freddy snapped. “When will you learn your manners, and wait for praise to come, instead of asking for it?”

“Who, me?” Dawson chuckled. “Wait for praise from a jealous guy like you? And get it maybe when my beard is way down to here, and I’m in a wheel chair? Not a chance! But thanks for them kind words, pal! After all, it was just a hunch. I could have been wrong.”

“Not a bit of it!” Freddy cried, and then grinned. “I knew definitely that you were right, because, you see, I suspected those phone lines being tapped long before you even thought of it. I knew how pleased you’d be to bring it up, so I simply remained silent. That’s how it really was, old thing.”

“Okay, okay!” Dave groaned, and gave a sad shake of his head. “We’re both a couple of very wonderful guys. Let’s leave it like that, huh?”

“Oh, quite!” Freddy said, and then, giving his right hand a snap wave, he added, “And now, my good man, stop wasting Government high octane. Take me to my destination, and be quick about it, will you? I’ve much more important things to do than sit here chitchatting with the likes of you--Hey, there!”

When Freddy shouted out the last he was upside down and hanging on his safety harness, and clutching at the sides of the cockpit for support. Grinning back at him like an ape, Dave whipped the Vultee back onto even keel and banked southeast again.

“Quite, quite, my lord!” he chirped. “Lovely weather for flying, isn’t it? The air as smooth as a mill pond. Oh, yes, yes, and pip-pip, old tin of fruit!”

Freddy Farmer was unable to make any reply. He was still struggling to get back his breath, and swallow his heart into place.