“The searchlights will go on in ten more seconds. We’ll start up the minute they fasten on anything.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when the night awoke to a blue-white brilliance as the searchlights sent their beams soaring into the sky. Back and forth moved the giant fingers of light, each one covering a certain area. Any plane near the reservation was certain of detection.
There was a cry from Lieutenant Crummit.
“There it is,” he shouted as he gunned the pursuit ship. It seemed to Andy that they jumped straight into the air, so fast was the rise of their craft. Up and up they went, the brilliant light from below pointing an unerring path toward the plane they sought. It was a black biplane, fast and streamlined.
The pilot was twisting and turning to get away from the pursuing beams of light but his task was useless with the army pursuit ships rising from below in an angry swarm.
They were at two thousand feet in no time and level with the craft they sought. Lieutenant Crummit pressed the trigger of his machine gun and a stream of tracer bullets coursed through the night, singing past the machine ahead.
Andy saw the pilot turn a desperate, terror-stricken face in their direction. Someone in the forward cockpit was waving. They drew closer. The plane was giving up. A white handkerchief was being waved by the passenger.
Lieutenant Crummit drew closer and signaled for the black biplane to follow him down. The pilot waggled his wings to indicate that he understood the order and they began the strange descent, Lieutenant Crummit and Andy in the leading plane, then the strange biplane followed by the five other army ships.
The operators of the searchlights changed the direction of their beams, turning them on the field to make it easy for the night landing.
As soon as their own plane had stopped rolling, Andy leaped out and ran toward the black biplane. Lieutenant Crummit was only one stride behind and in his right hand he carried a service automatic.