"Yeah, I get what you mean," he murmured. "Maybe there's a connection between this and what happened a while ago, eh?"
"If not, I'll be very much surprised," Freddy Farmer said slowly. "And yet I may be a bit balmy to say that. How could there possibly be any connection?"
Dawson shrugged, but made no reply. He stuffed the coded message into his pocket, and turned to where Major Parker was inspecting the Vultee.
"Thanks for giving us the message, sir," he said. Then he added with a grin, "It sort of looks as though we've been fired, you might say. Our superior officer is joining us here at midnight. Would it be all right for us to eat in the Officers' Club and sort of kill time until he gets here?"
"Certainly, Dawson," the major replied at once. "The place is yours. Help yourself to anything you like. So your survey flight is called off, eh?"
"Well, temporarily, anyway," Dave replied. "But don't ask me why, because I wouldn't know, Major."
"Okay, I won't," the other smiled. "I'll ask you this, instead. What kind of trouble did you run into on the way down here?"
"Trouble, Major?" Dawson echoed, and stared at him hard.
"These holes," the senior officer replied, and pointed to a cluster of four bullet holes six inches in from the Vultee's left wing tip. "Somebody been sticking a pencil through the wing skin, eh?"
"No; Nazi slugs," Dawson told him. "We—we came across a surfacing U-boat about eighty miles out. It crash dived right after it sighted us, but it threw up a few slugs in the meantime. We got a couple of its crew, though. We radioed Puerto Rico patrol base and gave them the U-boat's position. Have you heard any report that she was caught and nailed?"