"First blood for you, Freddy!" Dawson screamed into the thunder of his twin Daimler-Benz engines. "First blood for you, and how! Let's go, kid! They think they've got a date at Casablanca. The heck they have, I'll say! Here, you, a kiss from Casablanca!"
As Dawson roared out the last, he dropped the nose of the Messerschmitt like a rock and went piling down toward the row of parked planes. He saw two Messerschmitt 109's taking off, but they were past his line of fire, so he couldn't do anything about them. Nor could he do anything about the ocean of ground fire that swept up toward him. Maybe their 110 would be "drowned" in that ocean of machine-gun and rifle fire, but not before Freddy and he had made that secret desert airdrome a shambles of burning aircraft that would block off all other attempts to take off.
With every cubic inch of air seemingly filled with death-whining bullets from the ground guns, Dave rocketed the 110 recklessly downward and let go with all his guns and air cannon. One, two, three huge Junkers 88's seemed to crab sideways and then break out into flame before he was forced to pull up out of his mad dive, or go roaring in to his doom. His heart was smashing against his ribs, and his face was bathed in hot sweat as he pitted every ounce of his strength against the downward momentum of the Messerschmitt. Then, with but half a second to spare, he got the nose up and went engine-howling for the dawn gray sky.
"Dave! They are—"
Whatever Freddy Farmer had to say was drowned out in a tremendous thunder of sound. Sound that billowed up from the ground directly under the power zooming plane. Sound that seemed to envelop the Messerschmitt, to grab it with many hands and fling it cartwheeling end over end out across the North African dawn. All the fireworks in the world popped and crackled in Dawson's head. A thousand steel fists hit against his body from every conceivable angle. The nose of the Messerschmitt and the instrument panel started spinning until all he could see was a whirling blurr. The air that he sucked into his lungs was as liquid fire, and it seemed to dry up every drop of blood in his body. In a crazy, abstract sort of way he knew that some of the Junkers bombs had let go before he had been able to zoom out of range, and concussion had caught the Messerschmitt to make it as helpless as a dried leaf in a cyclone.
"Dave! Man your guns! Two planes got off! There they come down. From in front—from in front!"
Freddy Farmer's screaming voice seemed to tear away the blurred veil that covered Dawson's eyes. His vision cleared, and he looked up to see the two Messerschmitt 109's streaking down at him from in front. Freddy Farmer's guns were already blazing away, but the angle was bad, and the tracers were smoking well above the diving planes.
Even as Dawson looked up and spotted the two planes, he was pulling up the nose and fumbling for the electric trigger button on his control stick. He found it, only to have his fingers slide off. When he looked down, he saw that his hand was red and glistening from his own blood. The sight stunned him for a second because he felt no pain. That is, no acute pain. From head to foot his entire body felt numb and weak, but there was no sense of pain whatsoever. He was even more astonished when he saw that the front of his ripped and torn tunic was stained with blood, too.
One glance, however, was all he could take—one glance to see, realize the truth, and be dumbfounded. Then he snapped his eyes upward, tapped right rudder just a little to bring one of the diving planes into his sights—and fired!
The result? He saw what happened with his two eyes, but he did not know whether his bullets and air cannon shells, or Nazi panic, caused it. It seemed that he had hardly jabbed the electric trigger button when the plane in his sights swerved violently off to the right. Maybe his burst hit it and kicked it that way, or perhaps the unthinking Nazi pilot swerved purposely to throw Dawson off his aim. But whether no or yes, the 109 swerved violently to its right, and went side-slashing into the other diving 109. One second there were two planes hurtling downward, and the next they had locked wings, crumpled about each other like wet paper, and then completely disappeared in an exploding ball of flame and oily black smoke.