The bandit plane was staggering down toward the field. It barely cleared the fence and bounced toward them.
“Get back of this ridge,” Tim warned Hunter. “They may try to shoot it out and we’d make good targets out here in the open.”
Hunter agreed and they sought shelter behind a low ridge along the edge of the field.
The bandit plane rolled on and on. They could see Pierre working desperately at the controls.
“The wing motors,” cried Tim. “He’s trying to start them. If he does they’ll get away from us.”
“Keep down,” warned Hunter, “I think the burst of bullets you put into their ship disabled the controls to the wing motors or he’d have used them before he landed.”
The bandit plane finally rolled to a stop less than two hundred feet away.
“Come out with your hands up!” ordered Tim.
The answer was a flicker of flame from the forward cockpit, the staccato of a machine gun and the thud of bullets into the dirt which protected them.
Tim answered instantly, his machine gun tracing a steady, deadly line along the fuselage. Hunter pumped shell after shell into his repeating rifle.