"I'd give my life if I could recall that order," he said in a husky voice. "The order was for the light bomber-photo planes to go over at night, as though on a bombing mission. When they were over their objective they were to release the new powerful magnesium flares used nowadays for night photography. They were to dive, catch those on the ground by surprise, and take their pictures."
"The pictures still showed evidence of complete evacuation, sir?" Freddy Farmer put the question when the Air Ministry official stopped and didn't go on.
"There were no pictures," the man said harshly.
"No pictures, sir?" Dave echoed. Then as a wild guess, "Oh, you mean the patrol was washed-out?"
Group Captain Ball turned his head and stared at him out of eyes filled with sorrow.
"I mean that the patrol was wiped out!" he said in a heavy voice. "Not a single plane or pilot returned to base. Ten Lockheed Hudsons and not a one of them has been heard from since. They all just completely disappeared!"
The senior officer stopped abruptly and a tingling silence settled over the interior of the Squadron Office. Dave wanted to say something, but he could not think of the right words. A lump of lead was rolling around inside his stomach, and the palms of his hands had suddenly become strangely hot and clammy. Ten Lockheed Hudsons roaring out over the Channel, and on into complete and utter oblivion? It wasn't a pleasant thought. It was the sort of thing that seemed to drain the blood from a fellow's body, and dumped ice cubes on his brain, no matter how many times he had personally battled with death. The known you could always take. It was the unknown, the eerie, and the mysterious that cut your heart up into small pieces, and clawed your nerves to shreds.
"No report at all on what happened, sir?" Dave presently asked, though he knew full well what the answer would be.
"No, none at all," Group Captain Ball replied without looking at him. "The patrol took off, and never came back."
"I might add," Colonel Trevor spoke up quietly, "that Intelligence H.Q. contacted every one of its agents in the Occupied Zones. That is, all whom it was possible to contact. Not one of them could give us a satisfactory explanation."