"Stop it!" he ranted at himself. "Don't even let yourself think of it, you dope! Freddy will show up, or call you. He's just got to. He's—"
He cut the rest off short and stiffened in his seat as he caught sight of a plane ripping through the air toward him. As he opened his mouth to let out a shout of joy at meeting up again with Freddy Farmer, his breath stuck in his throat.
"But that can't be Freddy!" he mumbled as he squinted his eyes at the oncoming plane. "That plane is coming from the east, and Freddy would be coming up from the south. And—Hey! My gosh! That—that plane is German! It's a Messerschmitt 109, a Nazi fighter plane, and heading right my way!"
He cut off the last with a vigorous shake of his head, as though to clear his vision. However, when he took another look, the plane was still a Nazi Messerschmitt 109, and it was still racing straight toward him from out of the east. A moment later, though, just as Dawson instinctively slid the guard off the electric trigger button of his guns, the on-streaking Messerschmitt swerved southward, and its nose went slanting up in a climb.
"What the heck?" Dawson cried, as a faint sensation of disappointment rippled through him. "Is he getting cold feet so soon? Or didn't he see me?"
A couple of moments later, his last thought seemed to be proven true. The Messerschmitt pilot leveled off after he had climbed a couple of thousand feet, and Dawson could tell by the decrease in the plane's speed that the pilot has eased back to cruising throttle. No more than a couple of miles separated the two aircraft now, and though the Messerschmitt was perhaps three thousand feet higher than the Lockheed, Dawson knew that he could close in on the Nazi in no time, if he wished to.
That was just the point. Where a few moments ago he had been ready and eager for battle, he was now filled with a sense of caution. For one thing, what was a Nazi ME 109 doing over the Atlas Mountains? Was it close to its base—the same base used by the mysterious Junkers bombers—or was the pilot lost and wandering about in the North African heavens hundreds and hundreds of miles from where he should be? And for another thing, why hadn't the Nazi spotted him? Was the pilot dead, and was the aircraft simply flying itself until it ran out of gas?
"Or is this a smart trick, and I'm too dumb to catch on?" Dawson muttered the next thought aloud, and stared at the other plane that was now circling slowly about in the air. "Is he waiting for me to come piling in, because he has some special surprise package waiting, or what?"
As he mulled over the question in an effort to guess at an answer that might be close to the truth, the Yank air ace searched the surrounding skies. However, if he expected to see any other planes in the heavens, he was doomed to disappointment. As far as he could see in every direction there was nothing but sun-tinted blue North African sky and a few mountains of clouds piled up here and there.
"Maybe I'm nuts!" he groaned, and gave a little shake of his head. "Maybe I'm just seeing things. Or maybe I'm asleep and dreaming, but don't realize it. Well, one German less is one German less, I always say. So here goes for that bird tooting around up there. He'll—Well, for cat's sake! Now what?"