Dave Dawson at Casablanca

by Robert Sidney Bowen

After one look at the hideous sight Dawson flew into action. Bracing himself behind the pilot's seat, he grabbed the limp figure by the shoulders and pulled him back on the seat. Holding him upright with one hand, he reached around and opened the catch of the pilot's safety harness. That done, he braced himself again and eased the man to the floor boards. The pilot's eyes fluttered open, and his lips sprayed drops of blood as he tried to speak. Dawson didn't have time to listen. He leaped into the pilot's seat, grabbed the control wheel with one hand, hauled back on it steadily, and eased off the throttles with his other hand.

Little by little the crazy downward plunge of the B-25 eased off. The plane began to climb back into the sky. There was still brilliant white light all about. It had a silverish tint to it, and Dawson had the impression that he was flying straight through a phosphorescent ocean. In an abstract way be realized the white light was caused by flares that had been dropped from high above the bomber and were bringing it out in clear relief for a mysterious aerial night raider.

"Where is it, and what?" Dawson gasped as he squinted his eyes in the brilliant glare. "It's just one ship. I can tell it from the guns. But what—"

He cut the rest off short and heeled the B-25 way over on its wing and brought it around and up in a climbing turn with the engines wide open. He did so because he had caught a glimpse of a shadow boring in and up at him from the left. Just a shadow, but he knew instinctively that it was another plane. At the top of its climb, he whipped the bomber over and around in the opposite direction. The bomber was neither a P-40 nor a Lockheed Lightning, and his heart seemed to stand still in his throat as he waited for the big craft to come around. With each passing second, he expected to hear the savage yammer of guns blazing away at him.

As a matter of fact, a moment later he did hear guns, but they came from the B-25, not from the other plane. They came from the port side, and impulsively he jerked his head around in that direction. As he did so, he saw a sight that brought a wild cry of joy from his lips. Silhouetted against the brilliant background of light was a Nazi-marked Arada AR-95 twin-pontoon seaplane. He could see the silverish disc described by the spinning propeller, but the aircraft seemed to be standing still. Rather, it seemed to be held motionless in the air by twin streams of tracer smoke that reached out to it from the B-25.

It was motionless for only a moment, and then suddenly a sheet of flame spewed out from under its engine cowling. Fire mushroomed out in all directions, and in the wink of an eye, the Arada completely disappeared, and there was just a great cloud of fire hanging in the flare-lighted heavens. To Dawson the cloud seemed to hang not for seconds, but for minutes. And then, as though an invisible cable had been cut, the cloud of fire dropped straight downward.

"Sweet shooting! Pretty!" Dawson heard his own voice yell. "And I've got a hunch that it was good old Freddy who nailed her! If it—"

He stopped short, as he happened to glance ahead and to the left. By now the flares were burning out, and were down close to the water. Because of that he was able to see the seven-or eight-thousand-ton tramp steamer that was leaving a broad, churning wake as it made off at top speed toward the darkness to the north. The surface vessel flew no flag, and there was little to distinguish her from any of the thousands of tramp steamers.

She was no mystery to Dawson, however. One look at her racing away from the light of the fading flares was all he needed to know the truth. That ship was one of the few Nazi sea raiders left, and the Arada seaplane had come from her decks. By looking carefully he could see a cradle on the forward deck, and a huge hoisting crane that must have lifted the seaplane over the side.

"The dirty dogs!" Dawson grated as he glared down at the fleeing vessel. "If only we had some bombs or depth charges aboard, what a finish we could put to that sea murderer! We'd—"