Some twenty minutes ticked past, and suddenly Freddy Farmer came swerving in sharply toward Dave's plane. As Dave saw his pal cut in, the back of his neck started to tingle, and his heart started to pound a little harder against his ribs. He knew at once the reason for Freddy's sudden maneuver, but as he swept the dawn-tinted skies ahead with his eyes he was unable to spot anything to justify it. But that didn't stop the tingling at the back of his neck, nor the increased pounding of his heart. Freddy, of course, had sighted enemy aircraft, and that he couldn't see them didn't mean that Freddy was all wet.

Anyway, he stopped peering at the skies ahead and looked at Freddy swinging in to wingtip nearness. Across the short stretch of air s.p.a.ce that separated them he saw the flush of excitement in Freddy's face, and he imagined that he could see the bright, brittle light of battle in his pal's eyes. Freddy had shoved open his "greenhouse" and was sticking an arm up through the opening and pointing wildly ahead and a degree or two to the south.

Dave squinted in that direction, and squinted hard. But all he got for his efforts was an ache in his eyes. He could see absolutely nothing but the 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. But he had only to brush a hand across his eyes, or blink, and the "other things" wouldn't be there any more.

Then, suddenly, he saw them!

Three moving dots, so low down that they were practically in line with the horizon, and completely backgrounded by the yellowish orange rays of the coming sun. The instant he spotted them he pinned them in his vision, and breathlessly waited for the moment when they would take on sufficient outline for him to tell their type. On impulse he bent his lips to the flap mike to ask Freddy the obvious question. But he checked himself 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 n.a.z.i Luftwaffe was tearing out for a crack at the ferry bombers.

"They could be R.A.F. planes headed out to give us a hand with the escorting," he murmured.

Even as he spoke the words, however, he knew that he was simply whistling in the dark. If it had been decided for R.A.F. planes to fly out from England and meet them, they would have been informed of that fact before leaving Botwood. No, those three dots weren't R.A.F. planes.

So there was only one answer. They were n.a.z.i long range fighters, and Colonel Stickney's words about German Intelligence not being stupid were bearing fruit. Word of this ferry bomber-Commando aerial convoy to England had reached German ears. And there were three n.a.z.i planes tearing out to do something drastic about it.

For a moment or two Dave took his eyes off the three dots rushing up out of the dawn light and glanced at the bomber formation prop-clawing toward England. Ice coated his heart, and his throat became dry and tight. Twenty-one bombers heading for England, unarmed. Twenty-one bombers, each of which carried its crew _and_ a certain number of highly trained Yank Commandos!

"And it's up to Freddy and me to see that they get there!" Dave muttered grimly.

In the next instant a wave of blazing anger swept through him. What did Colonel Stickney think Freddy and he were? A whole confounded fighter squadron? It wasn't fair to give them complete charge of such an important aerial convoy. More fighter pilots should have been sent along to help them out, just in case. Doggone it! What did they think Freddy and he were? Cats with nine lives apiece? Darn it...!

The wave of anger vanished just as quickly as it came. A cold calmness took charge of Dave, and he deliberately reached up his free hand and twisted the ring on his electric trigger b.u.t.ton to "Fire." Then he turned his head and glanced over at Freddy. A set grin was on the English youth's face, and as their eyes met Freddy lifted his right hand with the fingers closed and the thumb sticking straight up. Dave nodded and returned the thumbs up sign.

"After all, there're only three of them," he grunted, and switched his gaze back to the advancing dots. "If Freddy and I can't handle three of the tramps, then we just don't belong!"

The dots were no longer dots. They had taken on definite shape and outlines. And they were as Dave expected them to be, three long range Messerschmitt One-Tens. At that very instant the two wing planes broke away from the center plane to opposite sides, and took up positions for a three direction attack on the ferry bomber formation. Dave shot out his hand and shoved the throttles of the P-Thirty-Eight's Allison engines wide open. Then he eased the nose up a hair, and with Freddy right at his wingtip he went streaking up over the ferry bombers and straight for the center Messerschmitt.

Not a word, of course, had been spoken between them. But there was no need for words. Too often had they tackled three enemy planes in spread out line formation not to know exactly what should be done, and to do it instinctively. And so, wingtip to wingtip, they slammed straight at the center 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 a shower of hissing bullets across the sky. If they got any lucky shots into the center Messerschmitt, they didn't know. But hitting it was not their big idea. On the contrary, they counted on exactly what happened.

The pilot of the center Messerschmitt didn't like the idea of two P-Thirty-Eights boring in at him. He started to return the fire, then lost heart and slammed down in a sharp dive.

But even before the German broke away from the fight, Dave and Freddy were completing the rest of their maneuver. Like streaks of greased lightning, each whirled off to his side and went thundering in for a broadside attack on the two other Messerschmitts about to close with the helpless ferry bomber formation. Maybe the pilots of those two n.a.z.i planes figured that they had actually remained hidden in the rays of the dawn sun. Maybe they figured that Dave and Freddy had decided to make sure of at least one victim, and pray the other two would miss the bombers and over-shoot and have to come back. In fact, maybe those n.a.z.i pilots figured a lot of things. The point is, though, they figured all wrong. For a couple of moments they had a chance at the bombers that was as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. But in the next they had a couple of flying wild men on their necks.

The impulse to twist around and see how Freddy was making out with his man was strong in Dave as he went cutting in at his victim with all guns blazing. Naturally, though, he didn't dare take out even that small amount of time. Even if Freddy and he got their respective Messerschmitts there was still a third boiling around some place in the sky. And so he tore in savagely, and thrilled with wild joy as he saw his tracers cutting into the Messerschmitt from its two spinning props clear back to the double-finned tail. The n.a.z.i gunner-observer returned his fire, and the pilot tried to whip around and into the clear. For all the good it did him he might just as well have climbed out and tried to walk the dawn sky back to Germany.

The Messerschmitt seemed suddenly to fly smack into an invisible brick wall in the sky. The plane fell off sharply to the right, and came way up by the nose. For a brief instant it hovered there in the air. Then red flame belched out from the two underslung Benz-Daimler engines, and in the next split second the whole business was just a ma.s.s of fire slithering down toward the rolling grey-green swells of the North Atlantic.

"Save a seat for Hitler, where you're going!" Dave yelled as he pulled his P-Thirty-Eight up and around. "He'll be joining you before very long. And--"

The rest died in his throat, and his heart seemed to zoom up and jam against his back teeth. It was at that moment that he saw Freddy Farmer's plane flip-flopping and half spinning down out of the sky as though either it were completely out of control--or its pilot were dead.

And thundering down with blazing guns after Freddy were the two other Messerschmitts.

"No, no, it can't happen!" Dave sobbed wildly, and whirled off his climb and 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 his Lockheed down in a wing-screaming dive. So great was his excitement, and so great the terror that clutched at his heart, he failed to see that n.a.z.i bullets weren't coming very close to Freddy's plane. As a matter of fact, the Germans were shooting half-heartedly. With the Lockheed headed straight for the North Atlantic, they figured that the finish of their victim was inevitable.

But they hadn't figured on Dave, nor the terrific diving speed of his plane. As a result the "fun" for one of them was short-lived. Though his heart shed tears of blood for Freddy Farmer, Dave's grip on the controls 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 burst would have been sheer waste of ammunition. The n.a.z.i's wing came off as though hacked clean by a knife. What was left spun like so much stiff paper tossed into a whirlpool, and then broke up in a shower of flying wreckage.

One n.a.z.i less, but what of it? Freddy was but a couple of hundred feet from the water now, and still flip-flopping helplessly downward with the remaining German pecking away at him. Stark reality was like white hot knives twisting about in Dave's heart and in his brain. Tears flooded his eyes, and he unconsciously hammered his free fist against the already wide open throttles.

"Dear G.o.d, please no!" he sobbed. "Don't take Freddy. Don't take Freddy away. I need him! England needs him. The whole decent part of the world needs him. Please don't...!"

Dave never finished the last, for at that exact instant a miracle seemed to take place right before his startled eyes. Freddy Farmer's plane stopped flip-flopping and spinning around abruptly. As though someone had 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 into a power zoom. Its guns yammered out sound and flame, and perhaps for the infinitesimal part of a split second the pilot of the third and last Messerschmitt was the most stunned and bewildered man in the whole wide world.

But only for that flash of time. In practically nothing flat he was no longer capable of thought, and less of action. He was just a dead man hunched over the controls of a diving plane--that is, the bullet-shattered wreckage of a diving plane. Before he had had the chance to blink or move a muscle, Freddy Farmer had pinned him cold to the dawn sky. And, not a little bewildered himself, Dave saw the Messerschmitt fall apart in mid-air, and Freddy Farmer, grinning from ear 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 to join Freddy Farmer. The English-born air ace was still grinning, and he was holding up one hand, forming an "O" with thumb and forefinger, and extending the other three straight upward. Dave gaped at him a moment longer, and then shook his head to drive the cobwebs and mist away.

"So, just another Freddy Farmer trick!" he growled, and shook a fist at the English youth. "I might have known that you were simply slipping out of a tight jam. And to think I was beginning to pray for you--you b.u.m!"

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 silent laughter, and he made a gesture with one hand, which was just the same as his lips saying:

"Weren't getting worried, were you, old chap?"

CHAPTER SIX

_n.a.z.i Wrath_

Like so many huge birds of prey coming home to roost, the twenty-one ferry bombers slid down to a landing on the R.A.F. field at Land's End at the southwest tip of England, and went trundling over to the tarmac line and the waiting mechanics. When the last had touched earth, Dave and Freddy cut their throttles and slid down also. They landed together and taxied that way up to the line. When he reached it Dave cut his ignition, climbed out and hurried stiff-legged over to Freddy's plane.

"What was the big idea of giving me such a case of heart failure?" he demanded of his pal. "Holy smoke! That little business took fifteen years off my life, if it took a day. In future, don't do that to me, see?"

Freddy legged down and pulled off his helmet and goggles.

"You think I was just having sport?" he snorted. "Far from it, my lad.

I missed my man completely. A blasted good pilot he was, too. Next thing I knew two of them had me all wrapped up and were ready to send me some place I had no fancy to go to. Much, much too close for comfort, so the only thing I could do was fake being hit and spin the bus downward. That at least threw off their aim a bit. And when I pulled out and up in the last second, they were--"

Freddy paused and grinned broadly.

"Well, the remaining blighter was too surprised to do anything about stopping me," he said. "But thanks for taking care of that other beggar.

I might not have surprised both of them. Fact is, I fancy you saved my life again, old thing. I'm grateful."

"You should get tossed in the duck pond for giving me such a scare!"

Dave growled, but softened it with a grin. "Well, here's England. Aren't you going to drop down and kiss the ground, or something? _This_ is England, Freddy!"

The English youth smiled, and there were stars in his eyes.

"Yes, England again," he whispered softly. "How wonderful to return to it from uncivilized lands where they eat raw things and call them hot dogs, and talk through their teeth, and drive ninety miles an hour even to funerals! Yes, blessed England! It's like being reborn. Like--like--"

"Like waking up from a beautiful dream!" Dave snapped, and waved a hand at the sky that was now overcast. "See? No sun over here! And just thirty minutes off sh.o.r.e we had plenty of it. What have the weather G.o.ds got against you English guys, anyway?"