Dave Dawson at Truk

by Robert Sidney Bowen

With a savage nod of his head to emphasize his words, he quickly made a check of the course and speed he had flown since taking off from the Trenton's flight deck, and then plotted a course that should take him to that little cluster of pin point islands, surrounded by a coral reef, thirty-five to forty miles in diameter, known as Truk. Yes, it should take him there, and he hoped and prayed so with all his heart and soul. Just the same a cold lump of lead formed in his chest and came up to lodge fast in his throat no matter how much he swallowed to get it back down.

"If only Freddy were with me!" he sighed as he swung his Hell Cat on course, and gave the Pratt & Whitney in the nose every ounce of high octane it would take. "Blindfolded, that guy can find any spot in the world just so long as you give him wind direction, or something. Yeah, if he were only here, but he isn't. This is strictly up to you, Captain Dumb Dawson. And I do mean dumb, too. You took so long to get this one logical idea that maybe that Nazi rat is miles and miles on his way there now. And when you show up you'll get a sky full of Jap Zeros thrown in your face for your efforts. Oh well ... Aw, skip it!"

As though to silence the little taunting, ribbing voice, he banged his free fist against the side of the cockpit. That done, he hunched forward a little bit in the seat and concentrated every bit of his attention on his flying. Eight hundred miles to Truk? Well, a Hell Cat can do four hundred miles an hour plus. So in a little under two hours he would be there, and ... it would be yes, or no. Success or failure. And if it was failure, it would be complete failure for him. There would be no turning back to the carrier force with his tail between his legs. There just wasn't enough gas in his tanks for that. If he didn't find the Nazi rat in time, and if he didn't get shot down by Zeros that certainly must be patrolling the Truk area, he would run out of gas and be forced into enemy waters.

"And that will be the same as being shot down, and maybe worse!" he said with a slight shudder as the thought forced its way into his brain. "Wouldn't those Jap butchers love to find a Yank pilot floating around in his rubber life raft! Wouldn't they just love that! A nice little pleasant session of target practice, and then ... Cut it, Dawson! Cut it, fellow, or you'll be driving yourself bats, do you hear?"

He laughed a dry laugh at his ranting words, and then sobered instantly. He happened to glance impulsively off to his left and for the fleeting part of a second he thought he saw the shadowy silhouette of another plane sliding along through the pinkness that fused and engulfed everything. But when he took a second and longer look there was nothing but a limitless expanse of cloud and fog.

At the end of a half-hour or so the fog beneath him thinned out considerably. He could see faint patches of the Pacific. And then after ten minutes of that the fog disappeared entirely. Rather it rose up to merge with the clouds and leave an area of clear air some five hundred feet high, and the horizon-to-horizon reaches of the mighty Southwest Pacific at the bottom.

Holding the Hell Cat to its course Dawson scanned the surface of the water in all directions, but he did not see a single sign of a ship. Nor did he see any planes when he searched the area of clear air all about him. He was still alone in a world of his own, and for a couple of minutes he toyed with the idea of climbing above the clouds, just in case the fleeing Nazi had done that, and he might be able to spot him. He finally killed off that idea, though, for the principal reason that it would slow down his speed, and he did not have to have anybody tell him that speed right now was the most precious thing in his life.

Speed and time. The two things that can change the whole course of the world. And which have many times, as history will prove. Right now, they hung in the balance again. At least for him. The speed of his roaring Hell Cat. And the time it would take him to get to the Truk area so that he might cut that Nazi rat down into the depths of the Pacific to stay there for all eternity. And so that the information he was taking to one Admiral Shimoda might be food for the fishes, too.

"And there won't be any little item of him getting me, instead," Dawson grated softly, as a little inner voice seemed to mention that possibility. "I've never scrapped him in the air, but he's one guy I know I can nail. I know it, because I know I've got to! So that's how it stands, Lady Luck. Just give me the break of being able to catch up with him, and then leave the rest to me. Swell-headed and cocky? Okay, so I am! But let me at him and I'll get him, just the same!"

Those and other tidbits of thought rambled through his brain and came off his lips as he guided his Hell Cat forward under the low-hanging overcast. This was the flight of flights for him. It was, because even if he won he would still lose as far as his own life was concerned. Even if he shot the Nazi spy down into the Pacific he himself would soon follow the rat down there. Not because he had been hit, or wanted to. Because he would have no choice. There would not be any gas left in his plane. And all the guts and courage in the world; all the fighting spirit and will-to-win determination that ever existed, cannot make an airplane stay in the air when the last drop of gas has been sucked into the engine. The age-old law of gravity comes into full force then, and down you go whether you like it or not.