CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Blazing Doom
One, two, three seconds slipped by before Dawson could move a single muscle. It was as though invisible hands of steel held him powerless. Only his eyes and brain seemed able to function in that short space of time. His eyes saw the top left section of his glass hatch melt away as if by magic. His brain told him the shambles that was suddenly made of his instrument board and radio panel would never in all this world permit him to contact his Casablanca base. The golden moment had come—and gone.
Keeping alive was his prime concern now. The Grim Reaper was savagely striving to cut life short for one Yank air ace!
In three seconds Dave Dawson became a flying madman. Instinct, and instinct alone, caused him to whirl the Lockheed up, over, and down in a half roll. Hardly had he started the maneuver, than he kicked the ship over on wing and came around back and straight up toward the sun-filled sky. Not until he had reached the peak of his power zoom did he take so much as a second for a look around. But now he did race his eyes about the sky, and rage boiled up within him as he saw three German Messerschmitt 109's pulling out of furious power dives, and prop clawing around and up in an effort to "box" him in a perfect cross fire.
"Not today!" he thundered wildly, and dropped the nose of his Lockheed. "You had one swell chance, because I was too dumb a sap to think of keeping eyes in the back of my head. That's the only chance you'll get. You didn't make good, and now it's my turn. Hey! You there on the right! How do you like this for a tasty dish?"
As he shouted the words, he touched right rudder a bit and slammed down almost at the vertical, straight for one of the power-zooming Messerschmitts. The German pilot must have thought that ramming was the one idea Dawson had in mind, because the Nazi plane suddenly fell over on its side and started to circle away to avoid a mid-air crash. But ramming was not Dawson's idea. No, not while he had slugs for his aerial machine guns and shells for his air cannon. However, he waited until the last second before he gave the Nazi aircraft everything the Lockheed had. The almost instantaneous result indicated that it was much, much more than enough. One minute the Messerschmitt was curving away, and the next it just wasn't there any more. That is to say, it was just a shower of flaming and smoking embers falling away to the sun-scorched Sahara far below.
"One!" Dawson bellowed, and cut his fire.