“I guess we can’t figure that one out until we get there,” Dick concluded.
“No, that will have to wait,” the lieutenant agreed. “And how we’ll manage to blow up that dam I don’t know. It must be pretty well guarded.”
“Boom-Boom Slade can figure out something, I’ll bet,” Dick said. “That guy can manage to blow up anything if you really want it blown up!”
At nine o’clock that evening everything was ready. The six men reported to Major Marker, who took them at once to the big car. Without lights they drove over the roads of southern Italy for an hour, eventually reaching a small airfield. They had no idea where they might be, as they had gone through no towns.
On the field, a big transport waited in the darkness, its two engines idling. First, the equipment was placed in the plane, and then the men climbed aboard. Before the door closed, Scotti and Dick Donnelly waved a last farewell to Major Marker, who seemed no more than a shadow on the ground below.
“Happy landings!” came his voice over the sound of the motors, and then they closed the door. Scotti nodded to the pilot in the cockpit and the plane picked up speed. In a minute more its wheels had left the ground and they were in the air, on their way to the most dangerous undertaking any of them had ever faced.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NOT SO HAPPY LANDINGS
It was a short trip. Their base was not far behind the front lines below Maletta, and the field to which they had gone was only a few miles further south and—they guessed—some distance to the east.
“The Air Forces are sending up some bombers for a little diversion,” Scotti said to the men around him. “They’ll pull the German fighter strength and ack-ack fire to the railroad bridges northwest of the town. And they’ll fill the air with plenty of sound for the German sound detectors, so that they’re likely to miss the sound of our plane. We’ll fly low so that the plane can’t easily be seen above the hills beyond us.”