Dave's whole body was trembling from wild excitement and torturing suspense before Freddy Farmer came to a halt right under the wing of one of the Messerschmitt One-Tens, and not an inch less than fifteen feet in back of the armed Nazi guard comfortably slouched in his canvas chair. For one awful second Dave was afraid that Freddy was going to attempt to creep right up to the man, but the English youth stopped a good fifteen feet short.
In the glow thrown by the oil-pot flare Dave had a good look at the German's profile. It wasn't, however, anything very pleasing to look at. The man had the hawk like features and weak undershot chin, so common to Nazi soldiers. His neck was much too small for his head, and looked like a stick poked up out of a hole formed by the collar of his cheap cloth tunic with a lump on the top. However, funny and dopey as the man looked, there was nothing funny or dopey about the rifle in his hand, or the hand grenades hooked to his belt. Those were certain death if he were given even a second in which to use them. There was also a question of the Nazi's mouth. One startled roar and his mates would undoubtedly come on the run.
Dave scowled in the semi darkness and suddenly wished he'd made Freddy tell him of the plan. If that Nazi let out a yell, or if he had just enough time to grab up that gun, it wouldn't be so good. Freddy would be forced to fire, and the sound of shots would surely bring other Nazis before they could leap into those planes, kick the engines into life and get away. Maybe he'd better....
Dave cut off the thought and checked his hand reaching out to touch Freddy as he saw his pal lift up the Luger and draw a dead bead on the back of the Nazi's head. A second later the English youth spoke in German and his voice was like steel hitting against steel.
"Don't move, or you're a dead man, soldier!" the words came off Freddy's lips. "My gun is pointed right at your head, schweinehund! One move and there'll be a bullet in it, I promise you!"
The Nazi stiffened. The half smoked cigarette dropped from his fingers to fall into his lap, but he made no move to brush it off. Freddy Farmer sighed faintly, and then he was away from Dave like a shot leaving the muzzle of a gun. Dave hardly had time to blink before he saw the English youth half crouched right in back of the Nazi and with his Luger pressed against the man's head. Dave leaped to his feet and dashed out just as Freddy snatched the Nazi's rifle away.
"Boy, that was fast, Freddy!" Dave panted. "Just keep him like that, while I unhook those hand grenades. Hot dog! Eight of them. Two more than I counted on!"
While Freddy held the gun hard against the Nazi's head Dave bent over him and unhooked the eight hand grenades from the man's belt. As he placed them gently on the ground to one side, the Nazi made a faint gurgling sound in his throat.
"What is this?" the fear whitened lips gasped. "You are Englanders!"
"And plenty homesick!" Dave grunted. "Now out of that chair and down flat on your face. Hurry, before I kick you out of it. Face down, and hands behind your back!"
The Nazi didn't need any urging by Dave's foot. He quickly slid out of the chair and stretched out face down on the ground with his hands crossed behind his back. The man's belt, his handkerchief, and strips torn from the canvas chair did the trick. In less than two minutes he was gagged and tied up tight as a drum.
"Okay, Freddy!" Dave said and gave four of the hand grenades to him. "Three loud cheers for us. You take the end plane. I'll take the next one to it. Don't forget our arrangements! And ... and the last one back to England is a dope. Be seeing you, pal!"
The pair clasped hands quickly, looked deep into the other's eyes, and then without another word between them turned around and sprinted for the two end Messerschmitt One-Nines. Dave leaped into his, fumbled for the safety belt harness in the shadowy darkness and fastened it securely about him. Then he ran his eyes and hands on the instrument board and gadgets to familiarize himself quickly with their various functions. Then he slipped the cockpit set of radio headphones over his ears, and reached for the throttle and starter button.
He did not press the starter button instantly, however. He rested a finger on it and turned his head and peered through the bad light at Freddy Farmer in the next One-Nine. The English youth had apparently done things at top speed, too, for just as Dave turned his head so did Freddy, and their eyes met.
"Tally-ho, Dave!" Freddy shouted.
"And how!" Dave roared back.
A split second later the starting gears on both engines whined out their unpleasant note. And a few split seconds after that both twelve cylinder liquid cooled Daimler-Benz engines roared into life. The instant Dave's caught he throttled it slightly and raised a hand to wave to Freddy to take off first. And at that same instant a savage blast of rifle fire broke out from somewhere behind. There was the blood chilling clatter of a machine gun, too. And Dave felt the Messerschmitt One-Nine tremble slightly as bullets tore into its tail.
He didn't waste time to turn his head and investigate. He simply snapped a glance to the side to make sure Freddy's plane had started moving forward, then kicked off his wheel brakes and rammed the throttle all the way forward. The plane lunged ahead as though tightly coiled springs had been released. The engine howled out its note of mighty power, and the yammer and chatter of machine gun and rifle fire from behind seemed to double in fury. Yet, clear above the inferno of sound came an unintelligible roar of rage that made Dave's heart start violently in his chest.
"Ox Face!" he gasped and hunched himself low over the controls. "Has he got a head of cast iron! He shouldn't be waking up until sometime next week. Okay, girlie! Off you go!"
As he spoke the last he hauled the stick back, cleared the ground and went prop clawing straight up toward the night sky. Just off his right wing and flying in beautiful formation was Freddy Farmer climbing upward right along with him. Dave grinned and felt a surge of pride in his breast.
"Good old Freddy!" he whispered. "Gosh! What that lad has done today would fill a book. A couple of them. He...."
A crash of sound and a blaze of light off to his left cut off the rest and jerked his head around. The glob of red and orange in the night sky was a familiar sight to Dave, and he recognized it instantly. Anti-aircraft gunners on the ground were groping for them in the black sky. A second glob of red and orange flame appeared in the sky, but twice as far away as the first, and Dave's heart slid back down out of his throat.
More anti-aircraft bursts appeared in the sky but as none of them was close Dave didn't give them a second look. He held his ship steady, prop-clawing upward and straight westward toward the English Channel. A couple of minutes later the anti-aircraft fire was far behind and rapidly giving it up for a bad job. At just about that same time Dave saw that his altimeter needle was right on the eighteen thousand foot mark. He automatically leveled off from his climb and turned his head to see the shadowy blurr that was Freddy Farmer's plane doing the same thing. For perhaps five seconds the planes roared straight ahead on an even keel, then Dave saw the exhaust plumes from Freddy's plane wink out, and the craft start turning around in a wide arc toward the north. The English youth had killed his engine and was starting the long silent glide back that would take him over the glider hangar area from the north. Dave swallowed a lump in his throat, cut off his own engine and went gently gliding around and to the south.
"Luck, old pal!" he spoke in a husky whisper. "We're going to make it okay. I've got the old feeling, Freddy. The old hunch. Be seeing you soon in dear old England. Yup! The home of tea and crumpets!"
Dave grinned in the darkness, and nodded for emphasis, but he couldn't kid himself. There was an icy emptiness in his chest, and the eerie tingling sensation at the back of his neck. In fact, for one crazy moment he was filled with the almost uncontrollable urge to call out to Freddy over the Messerschmitt's radio and suggest they call all bets off, and go streaking home to England, instead. He angrily killed the urge even as it was born in his brain, squared his shoulders and held the plane in its long flat glide southward and around toward the east. In spite of it being night he could clearly see the hair pin bend in the Lille River. And as the Messerschmitt's wings whispered their way lower and lower down through the air he caught sight of a few lights spotted here and there on the murky carpet of ground below.
He imagined that one of those lights came from General von Peiplow's test laboratory, and office, in the patch of woods. He imagined the Luftwaffe high ranker at the open door and scowling in savage defeat up at the heavens toward England. He imagined those things, chuckled softly, and made a face earthward.
"Just stick around, von Peiplow, old sock!" he grunted. "The old balloon's going up any minute, now. Any minute, now!"
As he spoke the last he squinted at the altimeter dial that was just faintly visible in the pale glow of the single instrument board light. The needle had moved down to close to eight thousand feet. That fact startled him for he felt he had started his downward glide but a couple of seconds ago. But it had been more than that. And as he took another look down over the side at the guiding bend in the Lille River, he saw that he was in correct position to the south of the glider hangar area. It was time to glide around due north and ease down the last thousand feet or so before Freddy's signal would come over the radio on the agreed wave length reading he had tuned at several minutes ago.
Banking gently around and down, he reached out with his free hand and made sure his four hand grenades were still in an empty map box where he could reach them without wasted movement. His own safety, and Freddy's too, rested in their getting rid of those hand grenades fast and clearing out from over the area twice as fast. If their planes received the full force of the explosion's concussion, the wings would be torn off like paper, and....
Suddenly, without the slightest sign of warning, the inky darkness of night was shattered apart by a thunderous roar of sound and a seething ocean of red, yellow, and orange flame that seemed to come boiling upward from the ground below. The plane bucked, and shivered, and lurched crazily forward. And for one horrible second a mighty invisible force tore Dave's hands from the controls. Head whirling, and his lungs seeming to burst right out through his ribs, he fought with every ounce of his strength to keep the plane from plunging wildly downward out of control.
Freddy Farmer! Where was Freddy? Did he get through? Was Freddy all right? The radio! Was it working? Would that signal come through from Freddy? Darn the blasted thing! Would it never speak?
Those and countless other thoughts spun and raced through his brain. Then a planet of fire rushed up out of nowhere. It seemed to crash straight into the nose of the Messerschmitt and explode in a roar that shook the very heavens apart. Dave felt as though unseen steel claws wer............