As though the Nazi pilot had actually heard the words, the other Hell Cat zoomed for altitude in a pilot's trick to cut the corner and drop down from above. Dawson was not to be tricked by that one, however. He zoomed himself, and prevented the Nazi from cutting in behind. The Nazi tried it again in the opposite direction, but Dawson stayed right with him, and even improved his position in relation to the Nazi's plane.
But it couldn't last, and no one knew it better than Dave Dawson. A half dozen times he got the Nazi in a cold meat position, and was helpless to do anything about it. And by then the Nazi knew, or could make a pretty good guess as to what was what. As a matter of fact, in the very next moment the movements of the Nazi's plane proved what was going through the pilot's head. The Nazi started to zoom up off to the left, and then deliberately cut off the zoom and flew right smack across Dawson's sights. Hot tears of rage almost blinded Dave as he saw the Nazi's Hell Cat sail by looking as big as a battleship. The greenest pilot ever to fire an aerial machine gun could not have missed that target completely.
It was then that the Nazi pilot knew for certain, and as his helmeted head was turned Dawson's way for an instant Dave thought he saw the other's face flame up in a look of mad triumph. Dave thought he saw that look, but it might have been his imagination. To tell the truth, his whole attention was on something else. The time to lose or win had arrived. He had fooled the Nazi as long as he could. By his flying he had made the Nazi wonder a little, and then wonder more and more until the Hitlerite took a chance to find out for sure. He did find out, and he probably thought that victory was his now. He could swing away and go on to Truk without danger. Or he could first stick around and polish off this gunless American who had intercepted him.
Yes, perhaps the Nazi thought all those things as he sailed by the front of Dawson's nose and received not a single bullet. But what he probably did not realize was that his instant of mad triumph was Dawson's moment for a last desperate gamble. A gamble in which one and perhaps both could lose.
"Make the most of it, rat! Here I come!"
Words? Had he spoken them? Or had they simply been the echo of a thought racing through his whirling spinning brain? Dawson didn't know, and he didn't care. He wasn't thinking of anything, now. That time had passed. The time had passed for everything save for mad, furious, smashing action that would stop this Nazi from reaching the Truk area, and rob Admiral Shimoda forever of what he was now probably waiting for with gleaming eyes and drooling mouth.
In the next split second a hundred and one things loomed up large in Dawson's brain. He saw the Nazi's marking F Dash Fourteen stretched up tall as a house. He saw the color of the fuselage with the last rays of the sun dancing off its smooth surface. He saw the Nazi's Hell Cat start to swerve violently. He saw its nose drop down and its tail kick up. He saw the Nazi turn his head and saw him impulsively fling up one arm. He really saw this time the look of wild terror that flooded the Nazi's face.
"Nope! You still lose!"
Like a soothing, comforting whisper those words filtered back to Dave Dawson. And then he slammed his Hell Cat over on left wing, and kicked top rudder with every ounce of his strength. For the infinitesimal part of a split second his plane and the Nazi's plane seemed to hang motionless in mid-air. And then his lower wing sliced against the Nazi's fuselage and cockpit hatch.
He knew that, because he saw it in the fraction of time allowed. And then all the furies of land, sea, and air exploded all about him. All the colors of the rainbow surged into his brain in brilliant balls that blew up in a terrific crescendo of sound. Ten thousand spears of fire pierced every square inch of his body. And demons with red hot sledge hammers pounded their way down into his brain.