“He’s got ’em all lined up,” Vince whispered. “Every one of ’em. It’s going to work.”
“Right,” Slade said, “and I’ve got our hatch in the pipe-line picked out.”
Then they heard Dick’s automatic firing from across the lake. The sentries on the dam were already so scared that they almost jumped off when they heard the sound. After all, one man in the power house had been shot that afternoon for neglect and carelessness, and by the very Gestapo officer, they thought, who now stood before them.
Max rasped out another order, and the sentries started running across the dam wall to the other side of the lake, with Max on their heels. In a flash Slade and Vince were out of the tall grass, running forward toward the pipe-lines, each with a heavy load. Slade took a wrench from his pocket and started work on the hatch opening in the pipe while Vince ran back for another load of material. By the time he returned, Slade had the door open and was boosting himself inside.
Vince handed up one big bundle to Slade, who disappeared with it inside the pipe. Then Vince kept his eyes sweeping over the surrounding land, looking for any sign that someone might approach. Inside the big pipe, Slade was struggling up the sloping steel shaft toward the dam wall. He slipped, he fell, but he picked himself up again and pushed forward. It took him five minutes to reach the end of the pipe, where the water-gate of the dam stopped him. Here he set down his load, turned, and slid down the pipe to the opening, dousing his flashlight before he got there.
Vince was ready for him with the next bundle. This was even heavier, and it took Slade almost ten minutes to get it in position. When he slid down again, one hand was cut and his knees were badly skinned, but he grabbed the coil of wire which Vince handed him and started up again.
Meanwhile, after firing his shots over the lake, Dick had run full speed toward the west, back toward the dam. He had to get past the dam wall before the sentries came racing from it. He heard their pounding feet close at hand just as he slid into a clump of low bushes just below the dam wall. He could hear Max roaring out his orders and he knew that the supposed colonel was ordering the sentries to go to the right, up along the lake, in search of the man who had fired the shots. They all obeyed without question, and then Dick slipped away from the bushes, went down the hill alongside the stream, crossed over, and cut back up to the spot beside the power house at which he had left Vince and Slade.
He smiled as he saw that the hatch door was open in the pipe-line, with Vince standing guard beside it. He whistled a signal and stepped forward out of the tall grass.
“He’s hooking up the wire now,” Vince whispered to him. “Ought to be down in a minute.”
And then Slade, appearing at the opening, leaped to the ground. He had the coil of wire over his arm and was letting it out as he moved away from the dynamite charge at the base of the dam gates. He nodded briefly to Dick, then closed the hatch door, but not so tight that it would cut through the wire. He stepped back toward the tall grass swiftly, still paying out his wire.