"Donnerwetter!" growled their chauffeur, and clamped on the brakes. A few feet behind loomed up a pair of headlights and a searchlight helped bathe the car ahead in a merciless illumination.
"Out!" said Kane sharply, flinging open the left-hand door.
They sprawled out and ran, stooping instinctively, through the patch of brilliance. Uniformed Germans were climbing out of the other vehicle and starting to form a cordon.
Dugan, the last man out, halted a moment to close the car door, then sprinted after the rest. They huddled against the forbidding wall that had been built around the rocket port. Larrabie, eyes on the brightlit scene, nervously hefted a bomb. Kane shook his head.
"Time enough to make big noises when we get inside," he advised. And to the whole party, "I spotted an entrance a couple of hundred yards back. Come on!"
They ran in single file under the frowning face of concrete. It might have been possible to form a human chain and get over the wall; but there was unquestionably alarms atop it, and ready guns.
Beyond the wall, a whistle began hooting. The field was being alerted.
Kane panted, "Don't know what tipped them off—but probably we were photographed at that gate."
The entrance to the field was solidly blocked by a massive iron grille. Beyond it, they could see men running and springing into position behind a concrete redoubt, through which a machine gun thrust menacingly, covering the opening in the wall.
"Damn!" said Kane. "No more time to be subtle. We'll have to knock that out."