CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Avenging Eagles
After what seemed like a million years spent in a world of torturing paralysis, the power to move and to act came back to Dave Dawson. And even as he pushed himself up on his hands and knees he heard bitter words spill from Freddy Farmer's lips as the English born air ace began to pick himself up off the deck.
"Fool that I am! The dirty beggar! Waited for me and copped me on the topper as I came around the corner. I ... Good grief! You, Dave? I say...!"
"Save it!" Dawson gasped as he got all the way onto his feet. "I haven't time, Freddy. He's topside, now. You stay here and rest that head. I'll get him for us. I'll get him, or it'll be the last thing I ever do!"
And no sooner had the last word burst from Dawson's lips than there came a mighty sound from the flight deck above to mock his words. The roaring thunder of planes taking off.
"Wait here, nothing!" Freddy Farmer cried, "We'll both get the blighter!"
Perhaps young Farmer said more. If so Dawson didn't hear it, for he was streaking toward the companionway ladder. He reached it and probably set a new ship's record for reaching the flight deck in jig time. As he leaped out on deck a hundred and one things met his gaze, but only two of them registered on his whirling brain. One was that Grumman Hell Cats were tearing off like a string of beads. And the other that weather, that practically unpredictable feature of the Southwest Pacific, was closing down. The sun was a blood red ball balanced perfectly on the lip of the world. Dark, ugly clouds were sweeping up dead on to the Trenton, which was now turning up maximum knots.
That some five or six Hell Cats had already gone off was like a mule's kick in the stomach to Dawson. Maybe the pilot of one of them was the Nazi spy. If so, in the matter of a couple of minutes he could lose himself in that weather and probably never be seen again. Maybe. And then again, maybe not. Dawson didn't pause to moan or groan over the situation. Instead he sprinted down the side of the deck to where his own Hell Cat was standing with its prop ticking over, and waiting to be run into the take-off line, in case it was needed aloft.