Those and countless other questions churned around in Dave's head as he stared at the other planes in the formation droning northward over the seemingly endless sky blue waters of the Pacific. Whether the answers that came to mind were right or wrong, he had no way of telling. Only time would tell that. In a short while the formation would spread out so as to cover as great an area as possible. Then would be the time for the murderer of Commander Jackson and Lieutenant Commander Pollard to make his move, whatever it was going to be.
However, when the Indian and her destroyer escort disappeared from view down over the lip of the southern horizon, and the patrol planes were spread out in wide line formation, nothing happened. Each plane continued droning along its prescribed course, its pilot and gunner keeping a constant lookout for telltale shadows under the water below them that might be Japanese submarines. And as the minutes piled up on one another, nothing continued to happen. Fresh doubts and fresh worries tugged at Dave's brain. Then, as a sudden thought came to him, he turned his head and stared thoughtfully at Freddy Farmer.
The English youth grinned, opened his mouth to say something smart, but checked himself as he saw the little lines of worry on Dave's forehead.
"What now?" he asked. "Did you forget something back on the ship? Or is this another hunch? Know what I've been thinking?"
"I think I have an idea what it is," Dave said. "The same thing I've been thinking, maybe. That he's suddenly called things off. He realizes that he didn't stop us from making this patrol, so he's decided not to take a chance yet. That it?"
"Something like that," the English youth replied with a grave nod. Then with a puzzled twist of his head, he added, "But maybe a little more than that. I mean that perhaps something else hasn't turned out as he planned. Perhaps he was sure that we'd sight enemy craft, but we haven't, so there isn't anything he can do but stay with the formation."
"Yeah, I get what you mean," Dave grunted. "If he should break formation cold, now, and go tearing off on his own, it might make the Section Leader go tearing after him to herd him back into place."
"Yes," Freddy said. Then, with a startled look: "Unlesshehappens to be the Section Leader!"
"Boy, the things you can think up!" Dave cried. Then, with a curt shake of his head: "No, that's out, I'm positive. Our Section Leader wears the Navy Cross and the Navy Medal of Valor. If he won those and then turned Axis spy and killer, then I give up. That would be too much for even me to believe. No, Freddy, our Section Leader is the one bird in this bunch who's okay in my book."
"Quite, and in mine, too," Freddy said. "It was just a sudden thought that hit me. I spoke it without thinking. No, it has to be somebody else. But I wish the blighter would tip his hand and do something. We're getting near the end of the patrol, and we haven't sighted a thing. We'll soon be turning back, and then it will be too late for him to try anything. He'll—I say!"
"What's up?" Dave cried as a look of horror flashed over the English youth's face for an instant.
"Listen!" Freddy cried. "If the beggar has decided to pass it up this time and try later, it'll be up toyouto get your head bashed, see? I've had my share of it. Next time it's you."
"There's not going to be any next time!" Dave growled. "There just can't be. Whatever's going to happen has got to happen on this patrol. Any more of this nerve slicing waiting, and I'll go bats."
"You won't be alone, I fancy," Freddy murmured, and returned to studying the rolling blue swells of the Pacific below.
Dave turned front and gave his attention to his flying. And for the next twenty-five minutes the Devastator droned along on its job of flying, with neither of the two youths saying a word. At the end of that time the Section Leader fired a brace of very-light signals into the air to signify that the patrol had reached its farthest point north. Then he banked around toward the south again. The five other planes banked around, and as the turn was made Dave glued his eyes on the other planes and half held his breath in expectation. But he was doomed to disappointment. No plane refused to turn and went streaking away on its own. All of them swung about gracefully in formation and started drilling back toward the south and the Carrier Indian far down over the edge of the horizon.
"Well, so that's that!" Dave muttered bitterly. "I was either all wet, or he decided not to take the chance this trip. Or maybe it was because we didn't sight any—"
He didn't finish the rest. At that moment Freddy Farmer's fist came down on his shoulder, and the English youth's voice cried out in wild excitement.
"Look at Number Two plane way over there, Dave! It seems to be having engine trouble. It's spouting smoke from the exhaust, and is nosing down!"
"A forced landing!" Dave cried without thinking as he watched the Number Two plane start to lose altitude. "What a tough break for those two guys! They'll have to sit down and float until—Hey! What am I talking about? I must be nuts! Freddy!"
"Absolutely!" the English youth cried, and nodded his head vigorously. "It's easy to give your engine a bad mixture feed and make the exhaust smoke. An easy trick when you want to break away from a formation, and make it look as though you have to. Dave! I'll bet you anything you want that that engine hasn't got anything more wrong with it than ours has!"
"No bet, no bet!" Dave cried, and clenched and unclenched his free fist in his excitement. "I think, too, that bird is pulling a trick. He's going down, and he knows that none of us will follow him down, because there's nothing we could do to help. We're land planes, not seaplanes. It would be up to the rest of us to get back to the Indian in a hurry and report that he had to sit down, and where."
"But I wonder, Dave," Freddy Farmer grunted as a sudden frown creased his brows. "Look. It stands to reason that he couldn'tknowhe was to make this exact patrol at this exact time. So it couldn't very well be that he planned to land in the water and have a waiting Jap submarine pick him up. That would be silly. He might float for days before a submarine came along to pick him up. And—well, how in the world could he plan to meet one at this spot? Maybe it is the real thing, Dave. Maybe it is a forced landing that couldn't be helped. See what I mean?"
Dave didn't make any reply. He stared hard at the Number Two plane as it spat smoke from its exhausts, and slowly lost altitude. Freddy was quite right. It could be that what he was watching was very genuine; that tough luck had dropped down out of the blue Pacific sky to smack a couple of Uncle Sam's Navy eagles. Yet he couldn't believe that was true. Something inside of him—he didn't know what—refused to let him believe that it was all open and aboveboard.
"Could be, could be," he muttered over and over again to himself as the patrol started leaving the crippled plane to its rear. "Could be, yes. But, doggone it, we're going to make sure. We've got plenty of gas, Freddy. We can find our way back to the Indian alone. I'm turning back and going down to have a good look at those guys. I have a feeling that maybe they won't actually land in the water. They may—Hey! They did! Look at them, Freddy! That pilot is swinging around toward the north and trying to put as much distance as possible between his plane and the rest of us."
"Yes, he's doing just that!" Freddy shouted in return. "And if I were force landing I'd try to glide as long as I could in the direction of possible help. But he's banking around and gliding away from the Indian's position."
"Gliding nothing!" Dave howled, and dropped the Devastator's wing and started swinging it around. "That engine of his is not cooked. He's using it just enough to keep him almost level. Hang on, Freddy! We're going to take a look at that bird, and no kidding. A close look, too. I think it will make him mad. So keep on your toes, pal. 'Most anything can happen now. And maybe it will!"
Freddy didn't say anything to that. He simply hung on hard and sat tight as Dave whipped the Devastator around and stuck the nose down. The other plane was a good ten miles away by now, and fast becoming not much more than a small smudge of black silhouetted against the blue water. Holding the plane steady, Dave took time out to twist his head around and stare back at the rest of the patrol. He wondered if the Section Leader, seeing two planes dropping out of formation, would get curious himself. But whether or not the Section Leader was curious, he made no attempt to quit his other planes and turn back also. The patrol kept on drilling southward.
Turning front again, Dave instantly picked up the other Devastator. And as he did so his heart leaped in his chest, and the blood began to pound through his veins. Smoke had stopped spewing from the engine exhaust. The plane had even stopped gliding. As a matter of fact, it was on even keel, and racing northward at full throttle not more than three or four thousand feet above the surface of the Pacific. That fact alone told Dave that after eight days and eight nights the gods of war had decided to give Freddy and him a real break. He knew, just as though a voice were shouting it in his ears, that the pilot of that Devastator thundering northward was in the pay of the Axis. And for some reason he felt equally sure that the Devastator's gunner was of the same breed.
One thing that had puzzled him ever since Colonel Welsh had told of the double murder aboard the Aircraft Carrier Indian was whether one man or two had taken part in that gruesome affair. He had believed it was two for the reason that if there had been just one man, he would have been unable to kill both of the Indian's officers before one of them jumped him, or tried to, at least. And both had been shot right between the eyes. That fact, and other bits of reasoning, had led him to believe all along—though he had not spoken of it to Freddy Farmer—that they were after two Axis spies, not just one.
And as he sent the Devastator rocketing downward and to the north, he felt more convinced than ever that such was the truth.
"I could be wrong," he grunted softly as he kept his eyes fixed steadfastly on the other plane, "but I don't think so. Nope, I don't think so."
"Dave!" Freddy's voice suddenly screamed in his ear again. "Look to starboard and ahead, on the horizon line. I think I spot smoke from the funnel of some surface ship. Can you see it, too?"
Dave tore his gaze from the plane ahead and stared hard in the direction of the English youth's pointed finger. But all he could see was an endless expanse of blue water across which the shadows of coming night were beginning to steal. Where the water met the sky was little more than a blurred line to him. If there was smoke from a surface ship on that horizon line, he couldn't see it. However, many times had Freddy Farmer's eagle, X-ray eyes picked up things before he did. And so his heart began to dance about in his chest with wild excitement. And for the umpty-umpth millionth time he experienced that familiar eerie sensation at the back of his neck that seemed always to come to him when trouble and danger were in the offing.
"You sure, Freddy?" he called out. "I can't see a darn thing. It's all just horizon line to me."
"I'm not dead sure, but pretty sure," his pal replied. "It looks to me like—Yes, Iamdead sure, Dave. That is smoke, a lot of it, from some craft that's traveling at top speed. Eastward, I think. And look at that Devastator, Dave! He's seen it, now. Look! He's banking northeast to intercept it. Dave! If that's smoke from a Jap warship, then we'll know we're right!"
"I know it now!" Dave cried. "Doggone well I do. Look at that rat tear! His engine is hitting top revs. Ten to one he's spotted us and is trying to give us the shake. Well, he won't. Not while we've got the altitude and can gain extra speed in a dive. Hold your hat, Freddy. I'm going to give this power plant all she can take. And be ready with those rear guns. He may start to get tough."
As Dave shouted the last, he jerked his head around and took a quick sweeping glance back toward the south. There was nothing there but darkening blue sky. Not a sign of the rest of the patrol. It had passed on out of sight on its journey back to the Indian. Dave swallowed impulsively and turned front again. His heart had stopped bouncing around. It had become a cold lump that hung suspended in his chest.
Any faint hope that he might have help with whatever was ahead had passed out of the picture. Just Freddy and he were left. It was up to them to finish the job they had started so long ago. How long ago, anyway? A week, a month, or ten years? It seemed even longer than that since that man reading the book in the room with the pails and mops had told them to go on into Colonel Welsh's secret offices. But how long ago it was didn't matter now. Freddy and he had come to the end of the trail. Luck, blind luck mostly, had brought them to the end of their manhunt. But blind luck, or very clever brainwork, what difference? Down there and ahead was a Navy torpedo bomber streaking north and east to cut across the bow of some surface vessel. An American vessel? Not a chance. It had to be Jap. And Dave was ready to bet his life that it was.
He could see the trail of smoke now. And Freddy had been right. It was coming from a surface ship with engines turning over at top speed. Perhaps it was a Jap destroyer, or a cruiser, or even possibly one of Nippon's big battle wagons. He didn't know. The ship was still down below the horizon line. But she was traveling, and traveling plenty fast.
"There go his torpedo and bombs!" Freddy Farmer suddenly shouted. "That means he has spotted us and dumped his load to pick up all the speed he could. He's our man, Dave. He's our man. And I'll bet you all the pounds Sterling in England that that's a Jap ship he's trying to reach. Blast the dirty beggars. We can't let him get away with it, Dave. We just can't. Not now."
"Shut up and sit tight!" Dave snapped, and jammed the palm of his free hand against the already wide open throttle, as though in so doing he might get even more speed out of the thundering engine in the Devastator's nose. "He won't if we can possibly prevent it. We're gaining on him, and I think he knows it. Look! See the pilot turning around and looking back? And, Freddy, that bird in the rear pit is unlimbering his guns! Get set, but be sure they fire the first shots. We've got to make sure, Freddy, right up until there's no doubt about it at all."
Even as Dave shouted the words, he slid his hand up the control stick and snapped off the safety guard over the little red button he pressed to fire his guns. The first tingling thrill and heart chilling excitement was gone now. He felt perfectly cool, and calm, and collected. No, it wasn't because he was any superman with nerves of steel that no power on earth could break. It was simply that he had flown straight into danger too many times to go all haywire and jittery. This, you might say, was old stuff to Freddy and him. They had been through it in France, and in England, and in Libya, and over the broad Atlantic, and out in the Far East. A thousand times they had gone hurtling into sky battle. And after that many times you get used to taking it in stride.
And so with measured movements he prepared himself for battle, if battle was to come. And that battle was to come seemed just as certain as that night was to come. And soon.... Soon? Just about four split seconds later he knew definitely that engines were going to whine under strain of violent aerial combat maneuvers, and that machine guns were going to crackle and yammer all over that Pacific sky. He knew it because the plane ahead and still below his altitude suddenly veered sharply to the left, and pulled its nose up and around in a wing screaming power zoom. And almost at the same instant Freddy's shouting voice told Dave that he, too, knew the battle was about to begin.
"The blighter knows he can't shake us off!" the English youth cried. "Realizes we have the altitude, and can come down for a cold meat shot, if we want to. And he knows we will if that ship turns out to be Jap. And it is a cinch it is. Right-o, Dave! As I recall, that chap's a pukka pilot. Name's Miller, isn't it?"
"That's what we called him!" Dave replied as he tried in vain to remember the face of the Devastator's pilot. "And his gunner is named Kaufman, I think. Miller and Kaufman! I wonder how they spell their real German names. I—Here he comes. And shooting! That tears it, Freddy! He's opened fire. So it's for keep, now."
"Get after him, Dave!" Freddy screamed. "Get in close and let me at the beggar. Bash me, will he? I fancy not again he won't!"
Like a battle grey comet gone completely haywire, the other Devastator came tearing up and around, guns blazing as its pilot tried to cut in under Dave and drill the belly of his ship. But he didn't even come close. Dave held his plane in its roaring dive just long enough to let fly with a single withering blast at the zooming ship; then he flung over hard on one wing, and went curving around and up himself to hold the advantage of his altitude. As he swung around, he heard Freddy Farmer's rear pit guns chatter. He jerked his head and took a quick look, and laughed out loud. Freddy's burst had obviously been too close for comfort, for the other pilot was kicking out of his zoom and off to the other side in a hurry.
"Atta boy, Freddy!" Dave yelled, and hauled his Devastator about in the opposite direction. "Shoot his pants off, but save the coat and vest for me. Let him—"
Dave cut the rest off short as he happened to glance back at Freddy. The English youth had dropped hold of his guns and was staring wide-eyed toward the north. Dave checked the question on his lips and shot a quick look in that direction himself. What he saw made his heart zoom up to bang hard against his back teeth, and stick there!
The smoke belching surface craft had come up over the northern horizon into full view. It was a man of war, a heavy cruiser, and Dave did not need a second look to recognize it as a Japanese cruiser. But that was not what caused his heart to zoom up his throat and lock the air in his lungs. Right behind the cruiser was another of the same class. Both ships were slamming along through the water, and even as Dave stared at them they changed course and veered around to the south.
On they came at top speed, and for a crazy instant Dave thought they had sighted his Devastator and were steaming southward to blast him out of the air with anti-aircraft fire. It was, of course, an absolutely crazy idea, and it was gone almost as it was born. And then an inkling of the truth cut through his brain. Cold chills rippled down his spine, and the inside of his mouth went bone dry. He impulsively glanced at his radio panel, and gave a savage nod of his head.
"That must be it!" he grated through clenched teeth. "The rats in that other Devastatordiduse their radio! They must have sent out the Indian's position, and those cruisers heard it. Now they're racing south to get the Indian under cover of darkness. That's it, sure as shooting. The rats figure that if they can't deliver the stolen plans of the battle operation in time, they can at least do some damage. Yeah! Give away the Indian's position and have her blown out of the water with her planes helpless in the dark. Good grief! Why are such vermin ever born?"
Dave didn't add anything to that. He didn't because there was even more pressing business at hand. During the precious seconds he had gazed pop-eyed at the two onrushing Japanese cruisers, the pilot of the other Devastator had taken full advantage of the opportunity offered. He had brought his plane wing screaming up and around, and was tearing in at Dave and Freddy from the side. As a matter of fact, it was the savage yammer of the English youth's guns that snapped Dave out of his trance. He jerked his head around, felt a tiny sting on one cheek, and saw a section of the right side of his glass hatch seem to melt away into nothing. Had he not turned his face just at that moment, he probably would have lost a good part of his jaw.
He didn't take time out to pat himself on the back for being so fortunate. Fact is, he didn't take time out to do anything but concentrate on slamming and booting the Devastator out of range of that withering blast of fire. The instant he was in the clear he whipped out his free hand to the release toggle that would drop the deadly torpedo slung in the rack under the plane's belly. Even as his fingers touched it he jerked his hand away and shook his head. No, he had to save that steel fish until later. Freddy and he would have to risk having it exploded by the fire from the other plane. And that went for the Devastator's wing bombs, too. Freddy and he would need those in the big battle to come, the battle against two heavy Jap cruisers.
"We've got to get the blighter in a hurry, Dave!" Freddy's voice of confirmation suddenly cut his thoughts. "We've got to get him and not let either of those cruisers pick him up—pickthemup. If they do, everything is lost, Dave. They're bound to have those stolen plans of battle operations with them, or at least stamped in their heads. If they once get aboard either of those cruisers, everything will become a terrible mess. It mustn't happen, Dave!"
"You're telling me?" Dave roared, and hauled the Devastator around in a dime turn that virtually made the wings groan in protest, and the threatening wave of a blackout rise up before his eyes. "You're doggone right we can't let them make contact. Hang on, Freddy! And let go with your guns the instant you get the chance. I'm going to charge them. It's either them or us, Freddy!"
"All set!" the English youth howled back. "Let her rip, and blast their dirty hearts!"
For a couple of split seconds Dave held the Devastator in its tight turn, and kept his eyes glued on the other plane. It was banking around to get underneath him and come thundering up for an all gun blast at the belly of his plane. So he deliberately held his Devastator in the tight turn until he saw the nose of the other ship start to come up. The instant it started up, Dave slammed farther over on wing, kicked rudder hard and dropped the nose down to the vertical.
Like a battle grey streak of lightning, Dave's plane rocketed downward. He leaned far forward, straining against his safety harness, and kept his mouth open to relieve the pressure in his pounding ears. It was as though a thousand fingers of steel were curled about his insides and striving to rip and tear in all directions at the same time. White balls of fire leaped and bounced around in his brain as the Devastator went down at a terrific rate of speed. It was agony to try to breathe, for the walls of his lungs seemed pressed flat against each other.
For perhaps three seconds the agony lasted, or maybe it was three years. Then he was practically right on top of the other Devastator, so close that he could actually see the whites of the pilot's fear-glazed eyes staring up at him. The pilot was trying desperately to kick off to the side and cut out from under Dave's diving plane. But there wasn't time, and the terror in his eyes seemed to indicate that he realized it.
Three seconds, and then Dave jabbed his electric firing trigger. His guns hammered and pounded out nickel-jacketed destruction, and a hail of doom tore into the other Devastator like red hot pokers slashing into snow. The plane actually leaped off to one side like a bird nailed in full flight. It rolled over twice, and its right wing started to tear away in shreds. As Dave went thundering on past it he heard Freddy Farmer's gun taking up where he had left off. A moment or so later he was able to ease his plane out of its wing straining dive and circle up and around and back.
Almost reluctantly he slid his finger off the trigger button. There wasn't any need to continue drilling the crippled plane. It was shy one wing, and was slip sliding about in the air like a dead leaf in a raging gale. Its propeller was still spinning over, but even as Dave looked at it black smoke belched out from under the engine cowling, and licking tongues of flame went darting backward.
"Poor devils, just the same," Dave heard his own voice mutter. "But they're probably stone dead now, anyway, so the fire won't add to their—"
He never finished the rest. Rather, he finished it with a wild shout of anger and maddening defeat. The pilot and gunner of the other Devastator were not dead. By a miracle the withering fire from Dave's guns and from Freddy's guns had passed them by. On the contrary, they were very much alive. Out of anger-filmed eyes, Dave saw both of them push up out of their bullet-shattered greenhouse and leap out into space and down toward the rolling blue waters of the Pacific.
Both the pilot and gunner were alive! Both had bailed out with their parachutes! Both would land in the water—and both could very easily be picked up by either of the onrushing Japanese cruisers. The gods of war were screaming with glee. A valiant effort by two valiant war eagles serving Uncle Sam was going for a complete loss, would completely fail in its purpose.
A thousand little demons seemed to be screaming their mocking laughter in Dave's ears as he watched the two parachute envelopes billow out and catch in the wind. Seething white rage boiled up within him, and he impulsively started to kick his Devastator around and down toward those two flying garbed figures swaying like clock pendulums at the ends of their parachute shroud lines. But even as he started to drop down, he made strangling noises in his throat and pulled the Devastator up onto even keel.
"I can't do it!" he cried hoarsely. "I can't shoot them like a couple of helpless dogs. That's murder. That's the Nazi way. That's not our way. I just can't do it."
"But we've got to do something, Dave!" Freddy Farmer screamed in his ear. "Satan himself must have saved them. And look, Dave! That leading cruiser! She's shot one of her scouting planes off the forward catapult. A seaplane! They're going to land and try to pick them up, sure as you're born. That means they know perfectly well who those two beggars are, and what they've got."
Dave nodded grimly, but didn't bother to make any reply for the moment. Icy fingers were once again coiling about his heart. He knew that Freddy Farmer had spoken the truth, if the truth had ever been spoken by anyone. Yes, it was certain that the commanders of those two Jap cruisers knew that the two U. S. Naval Aviation clad figures floating slowly down toward the water possessed the information that the entire Jap Navy had been waiting to receive.
Word of what had happened aboard the Indian in San Diego harbor a few weeks before had of course leaked ashore. Axis Fifth Columnists had gathered up that news and passed it on higher up. It was a dead certainty that the instant the Indian had weighed anchor and sailed out of San Diego harbor, word had been flashed to the Japanese Navy command, and from there to all of the Nipponese sea units on patrol. True, they probably didn't know where the Indian was bound, or what she would do when she reached her destination. Dave felt very sure that the secret of the surprise attack on the Marshall Island group was something the Japs still didn't know, or even suspect. However, it was equally certain that they knew that two of their spies were aboard the Indian. And, also, that they possessed information that was worth a major naval victory to the Japanese. For that reason every unit of the Jap Navy was on the lookout for the Indian. And every one of its brown-skinned rats, from the admirals down, had been waiting with savage expectancy for the spies to make some kind of contact.
That contact was now close to being made. It was unquestionably luck that had sent the bogus Miller and Kaufman off on this particular patrol. And it was undoubtedly luck that had placed these two Jap cruisers just a little north of the end of the plotted patrol course. However, war without luck, and miracles happening left and right, just isn't war. And now there were the two Axis spies floating down toward the water, and there were the two Nipponese cruisers. And one of them had already catapulted one of its scouting seaplanes to land and pick up the two airmen.
All that, and more, whizzed through Dave's brain in nothing flat. Then he tore his eyes off the two men going down by parachute and fastened them on the Jap cruiser's seaplane skimming along the surface of the water. One look, and then he went into action again.
"That's their mistake!" he shouted, and slammed the Devastator's nose down. "Like picking off clay ducks in a shooting gallery. But those rat Japs are asking for it. So they get it!"
Dave emphasized the last with a savage nod of his head and slid his finger over the trigger button. By then the Jap seaplane pilot saw what was going to happen. He hauled the nose of his plane up as though to give battle. Almost immediately, though, he got cold feet and went cartwheeling around toward the east. But it didn't do him any good. He might just as well have tried to zoom up and hide behind the setting sun. Dave had him cold in his sights, and the Jap was caught like a rat in a trap.
One long burst from Dave's wing guns. Another long burst from Freddy Farmer's guns, as Dave banked off and gave his pal an aim, and that was that. The slow Jap seaplane came apart as though it had flown full tilt into a brick wall. It seemed to explode all over the place and hit the water in a shower of small pieces. Dave instantly nosed up and twisted around for another look at the steaming cruisers still a considerable distance away. Even as he spotted them, he saw tongues of flame stab out from their forward decks, and the air about him was filled with a roar akin to that of an express train racing into the yawning mouth of a tunnel. A blood-chilling roar, and then the Pacific sky was splotched with bursting anti-aircraft shells that glowed red and orange and yellow all at the same time.
Dave grinned, tight-lipped, and instantly nosed down. It had been a pretty rotten bit of shooting, even for Jap gunners. But maybe they weren't to blame. Dave's Devastator was too low for their angle of fire, and the shells exploded well above the Devastator. Just the same it was no cause for great joy. On the contrary it was an advanced warning of what the Jap cruiser commanders intended to do. A ten-year-old child could guess what it was, too.
Realizing that it was useless to pick up the two parachutists by seaplane, the Japs were going to hold Dave and Freddy at bay by the sheer power of their concentrated fire, and steam alongside the two spies, who were no longer floating down through the air, but had hit the water and were floating around in their orange-colored life jackets. Dave cast a quick glance down at those two gobs of orange in the water, and groaned in bitter exasperation. How simple if Freddy and he were fighting on Adolf Hitler's and Hirohito's side! All he would have to do would be to stick the nose down at those two orange spots in the water and no more than brush his finger across the trigger button of his guns. Just a short burst and two rats would be dead, never to reveal what they knew. How simple, how easy it would be to do it that way!
But he couldn't. And he knew that deep in his heart, and in his soul. No matter how much he hated the Nazis and the Japs, and all the ruthless, rotten things they stood for, it wasn't a hate that could make him murder in cold blood. He and Freddy would have to accomplish their purpose some other way.
Some other way? Those three words exploded in his brain like bombs. As more shells from the cruisers' guns exploded well overhead, he twisted around in the seat and stared at Freddy Farmer. The English youth was gripping his guns with white knuckles and staring down at the floating spies. But stamped on Freddy's face was the very same thing that was in Dave's brain. It would be so very, very simple. Yet it couldn't be done. It wasn't the way of the civilized white man.
"We've got to try it, Freddy!" Dave shouted, and was conscious of the dry tightness in his throat. "It's our only hope—our only one. If either cruiser gets alongside those two rats in the water—"
Dave stopped and let a shrug speak the rest. Freddy turned his eyes from the surface of the water, looked at him, and nodded grimly.
"Quite!" he said, tight-lipped. "Us against those two blasted cruisers. We're mad even to try it. If a single one of their shells gets close before we've got rid of our torpedo and bombs, why then—"
It was Freddy's turn to cut off his words, and let a gesture of his hand finish the sentence.
"Yeah, we'd probably come down on the moon, or on a star!" Dave shouted, and banked the Devastator around toward the north. "We can get one with our torpedo, and go after the other with our bombs. Darn it, anything to stop them from picking up those two rats, finding out things, and getting busy on the radio. It's a job that can't be done, Freddy. But, heck! We've got todoit!"
"Then get on with it!" the English youth cried. "They may try to catapult more planes, and we certainly can't do a million different things at once."
"Here we go!" Dave roared, and pushed the Devastator's nose down. "Good luck to us both, Freddy. And it's been nice knowing you, pal!"
If Freddy Farmer made any reply, Dave didn't hear it. The engine in the nose was roaring out full blast, and the gunners aboard the two Jap cruisers, realizing what was happening, were opening up with everything they had. The din that hammered and pounded through that section of the Pacific sky was akin to that of worlds colliding. Hunched tight-lipped over the stick, Dave sent the torpedo bomber all the way down until its belly was almost slapping the water. There he leveled off, banked around to the left and headed directly for a broadside shot at the leading Japanese cruiser.
Squinting ahead was like looking into the mouth of an exploding blast furnace. Every gun, from small machine guns and pom-poms to the big stuff, was hurling roaring steel in his direction. Everything else seemed to fade out of his vision. He could see nothing but that moving wall of spouting flame and smoke directly ahead. Split seconds seemed to take years in passing. A hundred times he was tempted to release the torpedo and zoom up for safe altitude. But each time he killed the desire.
The Devastator carried one torpedo, and he had to make it good. He couldn't take any chances of missing the sleek side of that steaming cruiser. He had to get in close, real close, and then slam home the steel fish. A bow hit or a stern hit wouldn't count. It had to be square amidships, where the explosion would tear the heart out of the Jap craft and sink it like a rock. He had to—
The Devastator suddenly seemed to half stop and lurch crazily to the side as a furious blast of fire from the enemy cruiser's guns crashed into it. Dave had the feeling that he had been slapped in the face with a barn door. He went dumb and stiff from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet. Everything turned into spinning red light before his eyes. He knew that he was lashed to the seat, and that both hands gripped the controls with fingers of steel. But he wasn't sure.
He wasn't sure of anything any more! Was Freddy Farmer still with him in the Devastator? Was the plane still with him, for that matter? Or had the withering blast of gunfire from the Japanese cruiser sent him sailing off into thin air and death?
He mustn't die now. Not yet! The suicide mission had only begun. The aerial torpedo was still in its rack under the Devastator's belly. Or was it? Had the cruiser's gunfire touched it off—and had Freddy and he failed?
"Freddy! Freddy Farmer! Are you with me, fellow? Are you still there, pal?"
Was that his own voice he heard—that faint little squeak that sounded in his ears? If only he could see something besides the darned dancing balls of light. If only he could get his muscles to move. But they wouldn't move. His whole body had been turned to stone, and he was falling straight down through a world of blazing flame. He was—
Suddenly it was as though a gigantic invisible hand had reached out and wiped away all the dancing colored light from in front of his eyes. Like a man waking up from a heavy sleep, he found himself staring at the instrument panel of the Douglas Devastator. He lifted his gaze, stared through the bullet-shattered front of his glass hatch, at the nose of the plane with its whirling prop—and at the shadow-filled Pacific sky beyond!
"You're nuts, you're completely cockeyed. You should be falling down, not zoomingup!"
The sound of his own voice seemed to come to him from a great distance. He tried to shake his head, and found that he could. The movement dashed some of the cobwebs and the fog from his brain. He started to turn around in the seat when something hit him a terrific clip on the shoulder. It was Freddy Farmer's fist, and the English youth was yelling his head off.
"Bull's-eye, Dave! A perfect bull's-eye! But I thought for fair you were going to ram us straight into the cruiser's fighting top. Look at her! Look at her! Goodbye, you dirty brown rats! I only wish your big-toothed Emperor was with you. Make war on decent people, will you, you rotten beggars!"
"Hey! What gives?" Dave cried, as his still slightly benumbed brain refused to grasp the true meaning of Freddy Farmer's half screamed words. "What in thunder are you raving about?"
"What'sthat?" Freddy cried, and peered at him in dumbfounded amazement. "You don't—"
The English youth choked himself off, and the amazement in his eyes changed to a look of alarm. At almost the same instant Dave began to feel a dull ache on the left side of his head. He impulsively reached up his hand and touched strips of his torn helmet. The strips were wet and sticky, and when he lowered his hand it was to see his fingers stained with his own blood.
"Well, knock me for a loop!" he gulped foolishly. "Somebody, or something, must have slugged me!"
"I'll say!" Freddy cried. "A piece of shrapnel, I guess. A lot of it hit us. But are you all right, Dave? Does it hurt much? Had I better take over the controls? The other cruiser is—"
"Cruiser?" Dave boomed. And then like a curtain snapping up to flood his brain with light, he suddenly remembered where he was, why, and what had happened. Hehadactually fired the torpedo at the cruiser.
Ignoring another question that spilled off Freddy's lips, he twisted in the seat, automatically shoved the Devastator down onto even keel and stared down over the side. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat, and his heart stand still in awe and gruesome horror.
One of the cruisers was way over on its side and well down by the stern—that is, what little he could see of her. Mostly it was a boiling patch of red flame in the water that fountained upward and outward to hurl licking tongues of fire out in all directions. In a crazy sort of way he knew that the cruiser's powder magazine had probably exploded. At any rate, the craft was being ripped to shreds as though her steel plates were so much paper.
Then, suddenly, as he moved his gaze across the water, he saw a sight that made him cry out in terror, and shudder violently. He saw two tiny spots of orange almost directly in the path of the keeled over cruiser. And then he didn't see them any more. A tongue of boiling flame, perhaps an oil drum or something on fire, came slashing straight out of the smoke-filled air and down on that spot. The flames splashed out like drops of molten metal, and white spray rose up like a cloud. The two spots of orange that were the life jackets worn by the two spies disappeared from view as though by magic. When the flames and the spray melted away, the two spots of orange weren't there any more. There was nothing but a smoking slick of oil.
"Poor devils!" Dave muttered shakily. "What a horrible way to die. They were rats, but—but that was a terrible way for even rats to die. They—"
The last was cut off as though by a knife. A section of the sky seemed to drop down and explode right on the nose of the Devastator. For a brief instant Dave found himself in a world of utter darkness. Then the plane went tearing out into clear light again. It was shuddering and trembling like a spent race horse. He knew without looking that the right wing had been blasted by bits of shrapnel, and that the tip was beginning to flutter. Instinct and instinct alone caused him to shove the nose down and lose altitude fast. But even as he went down he knew that losing altitude wasn't going to help much. The second of the Japanese cruisers was just ahead and below. And every gun aboard her was thundering away at the Devastator at practically point blank range.
"Our bombs, Dave! Can you get us down lower and right over the blasted thing?"
Above the thundering roar of bursting anti-aircraft shells, Freddy Farmer's voice came to Dave as little more than a whisper. He heard it nevertheless, and nodded his head vigorously to let the English youth know that he had heard. They were right in the middle of the cruiser's fire now. It was just as safe to keep on going down on her as it was to try and break away. So long as he was able to dive, the Devastator presented a difficult target for the Jap gunners. But should he pull out of the dive, and arc off to either side, the Devastator would then instantly become a target tripled in size.
No, there was but one thing to do: to go on down on her and then let go with their wing bombs in the last instant allowed. That their bombs might put the cruiser out of action, to say nothing about sinking her, was completely out of the question. It was plain silly even to hope that such a miracle as that would come to pass. But it would be possible to put some of her guns out of action. And it was just barely possible, too, that the bombs might damage the craft enough to force the Jap commander to reduce her speed. That at least would be something.
Yes, indeed. If the cruiser was forced to reduce speed, she would at least have to give up the search for the Carrier Indian. And now that the two spies were gone, it was only logical that the Jap commander would go steaming southward in a desperate effort to find the Indian and pounce upon her in the dark.
"Sure, give her all you can!" Dave muttered as he hunched forward over the stick of the diving plane. "But don't kid yourself why. You know why, andhowyou do! Her fire has you bracketed. You'll catch it cold no matter which way you turn. So there's only one thing youcando. Slam down and give her all you've got left before your number and Freddy's number go up. Down—and give her all you can, while you can."
A wild desire to twist his head around and see how Freddy Farmer was taking it possessed Dave for a moment—but only for a moment. Just as suddenly he didn't want to see Freddy's face. Because of the look of certain death he felt sure he would see there? He didn't know. Because he was afraid that Freddy might read the truth in his own eyes? He didn't know. Only one thing seemed certain. Freddy Farmer and Dave Dawson had at long last come to the end of the trail. Their luck, if luck it was, had run out.
He wasn't afraid to die, though. Perhaps that was because he had faced death so many, many other times and managed to skin through. Anyway, he did not feel fear inside of him. Funny, but the sensation that rippled through him was one of fierce satisfaction. Satisfaction at completing a job that had seemed utterly impossible right from the very start. Bull luck? Blind luck? Okay, call it anything you wanted to, but the fact remained that two murdering Axis agents had failed to win through at the very last moment. They were dead, and all they knew was dead with them. Their corpses were but two of the hundreds the exploding cruiser had scattered all over that section of the Pacific. Yes, they were dead. Their information was lost to the Japs. And Freddy Farmer and he had paid back a little bit on the Pearl Harbor account. They had blasted a Jap cruiser out of the war and the world for keeps. That was something, anyway—little something extra for the Old Man with the whiskers, Uncle Sam.
Too bad the Devastator didn't carry a couple of torpedoes, so that they could slam a death blow into the second cruiser as they went down the long trail that has no end. Too bad, but no sense crying about it. The plane had carried only one torpedo, and they had made full use of that one. There were only the bombs left—bombs that might spill a lot of Jap blood over the cruiser's decks, but would never go through her deck plates to do real damage below. And so—
"So here goes!" Dave whispered softly as the gun-spitting cruiser seemed to come sweeping up toward his spinning propeller. "Here goes Freddy—and here I go. Something to remember us by!"
A sob rose up in Dave's throat and stuck. He winked his eyes that had suddenly begun to sting. Then he grinned, and the grin grew into a harsh, defiant laugh. The last split second had arrived. He had to pull out and give Freddy a chance to release their wing bombs, or dive on straight into the cruiser. He was tempted to do that last thing: to slam straight in and go out in a roaring blaze of glory. But cold fighting sense refused to permit him to do it.
He braced himself, hauled back on the stick, brought the nose up and shot straight forward not twenty feet above the cruiser's fighting top. One second more and he would streak right over the up-tilted muzzles of the forward anti-aircraft guns. A target a blind man couldn't miss. A target you could hit with rocks. One second more. Two at the most. Dump the bombs, Freddy! Slam them down and blast some of those dirty brown devils to the place where they and all their filthy back-stabbing breed belong. Give it to them, Freddy. Give them all we've got left!
Dave didn't know whether he was roaring out the words, or whether they were simply echoing around in his brain. He simply knew that the Devastator was perched on the very brink of all eternity, and that he was banging out the last of his bullets as a sort of final touch. He only knew that—
But he didn't. He didn't know anything any more. He was completely lost in a huge black cloud that pressed in on him from all sides. He was right in the middle of it, and sailing away and away. The light of day was gone, and night was all about him. Was it night, or was this what death was like? Darkness. Thick darkness with a faint roaring in the distance, and drifting to him from all sides.
"I can't be dead—my head hurts too darned much!"
The sound of his own voice in that cloud of darkness startled him so that he cried out in fear. Then suddenly he felt himself sink down; felt water in his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and in his ears. He gasped, and water poured down his throat—salty, smoky tasting water. And his lungs seemed to burst right out between his ribs. His brain refused point blank to function, but the instinct of self-preservation came to his rescue. Without realizing it, he kicked with his feet and struck out blindly with his hands. He couldn't move his right hand, though. There was something hanging onto it, a dead weight that made it impossible for him to move his arm.
Then suddenly he was sucking and gurgling air into his lungs. Just as suddenly the film over his eyes passed away, and he found himself looking at a world of brilliant stars over his head. And just as suddenly he realized that he was in the water, keeping himself afloat with one hand, and clutching hold of Freddy Farmer's helmeted head with the other, striving to keep the English youth's face out of water.
It was dark as pitch all about him. Yet when he winked the water from his eyes a weird glow of light seemed to filter down from the stars. He saw dark objects floating about him. There were pieces of wreckage, but for the moment he could not summon the strength to swim toward them. In a dulled sort of way he knew that something was wrong, that something wasn't right. Then he knew what it was. His life jacket was gone, at least half of it. The other half was in strips and wasn't of any use. Freddy Farmer's life jacket was gone completely. In fact, he had on nothing but his shirt. Dave could tell that when a swell lifted the English youth's shoulder up out of the water.
Bit by bit Dave's brain began to click over at increased speed. Presently it gave him the sense to take a good look at Freddy. He pulled his pal closer, and as he did so held his breath in terror. But God had been kind. Freddy Farmer was not dead. He was unconscious, but he was breathing. A mighty sob of joy shook Dave's body. He clenched his teeth, and summoned every ounce of strength in his half numb body. He saw a large sized object floating by a few yards away. It looked like the top side of a crate, or perhaps it was a bunk. He struck out for it with one hand and two feet. Only a few yards away, but every foot was a mile to Dave's straining efforts. His head pounded, and all the colors of the rainbow flashed and whizzed around before his eyes.
Then finally his outstretched hand clutched hold of something. It felt like a loop of rope, and it was fastened to the floating object. He didn't bother to find out what the object was. He was quite content to cling to the looped rope for several minutes and fight for his breath and his strength. Eventually, though, he shifted his position in the water, thrust up his hand and hooked it over the side of the object. And it was then he made the joyful discovery. It was not a crate, or a bunk. The object was a ship's raft—a life raft constructed something like a rubber life raft. Airtight circular drums formed the sides, and stout planks lashed together three thick formed the bottom of the raft.
Dave laughed and cried in the same breath, and then almost spent the last of his strength in a mad effort to scramble onto the raft and haul Freddy Farmer up with him. Three times he tried it, only to lose his grip and slide back into the water, and under. He didn't try it that way a fourth time. He forced himself to spend a good ten minutes still clinging to the looped rope. Then, when renewed strength began to seep slowly through his body, he worked Freddy Farmer's unconscious body close to the raft, got one of the English youth's arms flung up over the side, and then the other. Then inch by inch he worked the dead weight up until Freddy went tumbling over and down onto the floor of the raft.
It required another rest period of some ten minutes for Dave to dig up some more strength. Then, grabbing hold with both of his hands, he worked his body upward, muscles straining, strength ebbing away like a punctured balloon spilling air, and all the firecrackers in the world going off in his brain. It took years, it seemed, but he finally made it. He got all the way in and fell sprawling down on top of Freddy Farmer. He tried to push himself up and crawl off his pal, but that was the moment when all the glittering stars in the heavens fell down and hit him on top of the head.
His next sensation was that his whole body was on fire. He opened his eyes, but it was like looking straight in through the opened door of a blast furnace going full force. He closed his eyes, groaned, and tried to move. It was then that water hit him smack in the face, and hands took hold of him.
"Dave! Speak to me, Dave! It's Freddy. Dave! Please speak! Can you hear me? Steady, lad, steady! Relax and let me hold you. Praise be to Allah! I've been terrified for hours that you were a goner!"
With a tremendous effort Dave forced his eyes open. The glare of the blast furnace was gone, but he could still feel the heat. For a few seconds he didn't try to think. He didn't try to do anything except relax, and let somebody hold him up, and keep the glare of that blast furnace out of his eyes. He knew it must be Freddy Farmer. He recognized the voice, and the voice had said so. Good old Freddy. Always there at the right time. Never failed. One in a million. The very best. The tops.
"Hold it, Dave!" Freddy's voice cried in his ears again. "Don't let go, pal. Hold it. Buck up. Come on, now. There's a lad for you. Cheeri-o, Dave!"
He found that his eyes were opened again, and that Freddy Farmer's grinning face was but a foot from his own. He stared at it, grinned himself, and suddenly strength and vitality began coursing through his veins. He took his eyes off Freddy's face, looked about him, and gulped. As far as he could see in any direction was nothing but a limitless expanse of sky blue water—sky blue water filmed over with golden light from the blazing sun hanging high in the heavens. He and Freddy Farmer were alone in the life raft, completely alone. There wasn't a drop of water, nor a package of food, or anything. The raft was bare of all things that help to sustain life. Startling realization brought sudden and violent hunger to his stomach, and a craving thirst to his lips. He looked back to meet Freddy's eyes, and forced another grin to his lips.
"Guess they don't want us up at the Pearly Gates yet, pal," he said slowly. "But maybe this is all a dream, or something."
"It isn't!" Freddy said grimly. "I've been hoping so ever since yesterday afternoon. But it's real, Dave. It's too blasted real, I say."
"Easy, Freddy!" Dave cried. "Yesterday afternoon?Where do you get that stuff? Why, it can't—!"
"It is!" Freddy interrupted. "I came to just before sundown. You were sprawled over me. Phew! I thought you were stone dead. I managed to wiggle out from under you, and prop you up. Bit too much for me, though. I spent most of the night coming to and passing out again. I felt better when dawn came. Took stock of things and saw there was nothing to do but wait. Kept your face out of the sun, as much as I could. And—well, I guess I prayed most of the time. Nothing has happened, though. Nothing's passed by except some dead Japs, with some sharks after them. They—"
The English youth paused and shuddered. Dave reached out a hand and pressed his arm.
"Steady does it, Freddy," he said gently. "We're still alive. And we're together. That's a lot in my book. And, heck! This is a whole lot better than if that darned Jap cruiser had picked us up. I don't think they'd have been very nice to us."
Freddy Farmer's jaw dropped, and his eyes went wide.
"Jap cruiser pick us up?" he gasped. "Are you balmy, Dave? It went down like a rock. The blasted thing practically broke in two! You just barely got us clear of the flying pieces before our wing came off and we crashed in. Why—!"
"Whoa, hold her!" Dave shouted, and jerked himself up straight despite the pain and aches it caused. "You mean we got that second cruiser? You're nuts! Our bombs wouldn't even dent her plates. They—"
"They didn't!" Freddy cried. "A lucky hit. One went right down one of her funnels. It must have, because I just had time to see the great cloud of flame and smoke that belched up out of her funnel before concussion was tossing us around like a leaf. It's the truth, Dave! Didn't you see it? Worse than the one we'd torpedoed. She broke right clean through. Then we crashed into the water. You yelled to me to duck, and—well, that's the last I remember until I came to late yesterday afternoon. How did you get us out of the wreck and aboard this raft, anyway?"
"The first part of that we'll never know, Freddy," Dave said in an awed voice. "Maybe it was two other guys, or something. I don't remember a thing from the time I leveled out of the dive until I woke up in the water, and had you by the helmet. It was night, and all sorts of things were floating by. I saw this raft, but thought it was a crate, and got us over to it. I got us both inside, and then went out like a light. Sweet tripe, Freddy! We've been floating around in this thing for at least two days and two nights. No wonder I could eat a horse, whole, and drink a well dry. You've—you've seen nothing, Freddy? No ship, no plane?"
Freddy shook his head.
"Nothing, Dave," the English youth said in a low voice. "The Pacific's a pretty big place, you know. It's—Dave! What's the matter? You look as if you'd seen a ghost!"
Dave shook his head, put out a hand and touched Freddy.
"Don't move, Freddy!" he said hoarsely. "Don't even look. It—it might not be true. But—but, it is,it is! Look, Freddy! To the east. A ship! It's a destroyer. She's heading this way. Look at her spill smoke. She's heading this way. And it's Yank. I can tell from her lines, and stacks.Look, Freddy! Lady Luck was just waiting until we both woke up, that's all. She wanted us both to be surprised. She—"
Freddy's eyes turned to the east.
Dave raved on like a man gone delirious with joy, and he was. Words, all kinds of crazy words babbled off his lips. And words, all kinds of crazy words also spilled from Freddy Farmer's tongue as together they watched one of Uncle Sam's destroyers come tearing down on them. She swept up on them like a thing alive, slowed down just long enough to cast off one of her boats, and then started circling about them. In ten minutes grinning Navy gobs helped Dave and Freddy into the boat. And about twenty minutes after that they were in sick bay aboard the USS Paul Jones, and receiving the very best of medical treatment. It was all they could do to keep awake, despite their gnawing hunger. The wild excitement of rescue had been too much for either of them. It had sapped their strength down to almost the last drop. But they managed to keep awake long enough to ask questions, and receive astonishing answers from the youthful lieutenant in command of the destroyer.
They learned that the attack on the Marshall Islands had been carried out successfully. That a whole lot of what had happened at Pearl Harbor had been paid back to the Sons of Nippon. They learned that they had been afloat in the raft for three whole days and nights. They learned that one Colonel Welsh had requested that special permission be given Navy units in that section of the Pacific to search for them when it was reported by scouting planes that cruiser wreckage had been seen floating on the water. They learned that a searching plane had sighted them from the air that very morning, although Freddy had not seen nor heard it. The scouting plane had directed the Paul Jones to the spot. They learned also that Jap sailors picked up from the area where the cruisers had gone down had told of what they had done with one lone Douglas Devastator.
"It was that report that set this Colonel Welsh to moving Heaven, earth, and the Navy Department, to get a search going," the destroyer's commander finished up. "He must have had the President with him, because darned near the whole Pacific Fleet hopped right to it. Who is this Colonel Welsh, anyway? Can't say I ever heard of him. He must be quite a man when it comes to getting things done."
"Yeah," Dave mumbled drowsily. "Quite a man. Swell to work under. Got a nice technique. Gets you so doggone mad you'd go out and fly without wings, just to prove you could do it. Yeah, the Colonel knows his stuff. Right, Freddy?"
Freddy Farmer didn't agree or disagree. He was already sound asleep!
—THE END—