“I thought you’d get that hammer-on-the-hull message,” the plane’s pilot called with a smile. “Nippo just took one look at me coming and decided he had a date west of here in a big hurry.”
Larry passed on his report of not having sighted the big Jap convoy and learned that no other submarine had found it either.
“Well, you’re on your own now,” the pilot said. “Go get ’em and good luck.”
They waved as the plane turned and roared over the water, lifted in the air and circled to the east with a last dip of its wings.
“Now where do we go from here?” March asked.
“We’ll head west,” Larry said. “After that Jap plane. Let’s get going. I’m going to find that convoy!”
Meanwhile, the Jap plane heading west had sighted something else. Its pilot was angry at having been driven away from an American submarine just when it was about to blow the hated pigboat to its ancestors. And there ahead of him—to make up for that loss—was a lone American fighter plane. He grinned happily.
“American plane,” he said to his co-pilot. “We get him.”
The co-pilot looked worried. “American fighter too fast for slow flying boat. Maybe he get us!”
But the pilot was angry and not to be argued with. “No, we get American fighter!”