"Of course!" Freddy cried as an agonized look flashed across his excitement and tension flushed face. "I may be all wet, but I think I know why. We pulled a terrible boner, Dave!"
"Gosh! Only one? What?"
"The fight with that Jap sub!" Freddy said with a groan. "I mean, not mentioning shooting."
"The scrap with the Jap sub?" Dave echoed in amazement. "Are you nuts? We'd have been dead ducks in nothing flat if we'd so much as breathed a word about that, you dope!"
"Not the fight with the sub, you balmy idiot!" Freddy roared back. "But we should have said that we were shot at getting away from Singapore. Instead we said that not a shot was fired at us! Look out there on the wing. They've even patched that sub's machine gun bullet holes. Don't you suppose they wondered how those holes got there? Why we didn't even mention being shot at?"
Dave looked out at the ten or twelve little grey fabric patches on the right lower wing, and swallowed hard. So that was why the Jap pilot had come busting in all steamed up. And that's why General Kashomia's face had showed rage for an instant, and why he had obviously barked orders to be carried out. That was the beginning of the change in Kashomia. That was when Dave had felt his hunch that Freddy and he had stuck their necks out just a little too far. That's when....
"That Jap Brass Hat beggar isn't sure of us at all, Dave!" Freddy's voice cut in on his thoughts. "He really doesn't want to know a blasted thing about that American Volunteer Group north of Lashio. This is some kind of a trick, Dave. I'm sure of it. I feel certain that he's sent us up to see if we'd head straight for Singapore. There can't be any two ways about that."
"But what's to stop us?" Dave called back. "My gosh, Freddy, you don't want to fly toward this Pidang village, do you? The gas tanks are full, and we can make Singapore easy, and give the alarm."
"Hold it, Dave!" Freddy shouted as Dawson started to level off the climb and veer around toward the south. "Don't try it, yet. There's one thing I guess you didn't notice, or did you? Four of those Nakajima Ninety-Six single seater fighters took off awhile ago, and I don't see them in the air any place."
"So what?" Dave grunted with a scowl. "They probably went someplace else."