“We’ll make it to the mainland, I think,” the young skipper said, after a glance at the fuel gauge. “We haven’t a lot to spare, though, after fooling around the harbor with those seaplanes. I’ll go upstairs and cut the engines down to bare flying speed, Curly. That ought to save enough gas to bring us home safely.”
The Marauder climbed easily now, with no bomb load and nearly empty fuel tanks. At ten thousand feet she looked down on a world of rolling clouds still dyed with sunrise colors. The air at that altitude was clear and almost windless.
“Course is southwest by south,” Curly Levitt’s voice came over the phone. “As long as we stay above the ceiling, I can make corrections by shooting the sun.”
“Good!” Barry answered. “I’m cutting speed to one hundred fifty m.p.h. We’ll try to hold her there for the rest of the trip. How are your shell-torn heroes doing back there in the waist?”
“Say, Lieutenant,” came Fred Marmon’s reply, “did you ever try to bandage a man’s seat with a roll of one-inch gauze? I might do it if Soapy would hold still, but he’s wiggling like a worm on a fishhook.... Stand still, you jitterbug!”
“Aw, don’t try to be funny!” Soapy’s aggrieved voice answered. “That iodine you sloshed on me burns like fire. Just wait till I start operating on your legs, wise guy!”
A chorus of chuckles bubbled over the intercommunication system. Everyone began ribbing Soapy and Fred, until the two sergeants were forced to join in the laughter at their expense.
As the merriment died down, Mickey Rourke reported another B-26 bomber overtaking them. It was flying at top speed, heading for Barry’s plane as straight as a bullet.
“Hold her steady, Lieutenant,” the little Irishman warned. “That crackpot pilot is intendin’ to give us a scare if he can. I wish he wuz a bloody Jap and I could let him have it—yeow!”
The oncoming bomber had dived at the last moment under Barry’s ship. Her vertical fin had actually ticked Mickey’s tail position, sending a slight shock through the whole plane. An instant later she was nosing ahead, still perilously close to the belly of the slower flying craft.