"No use!" Barker's voice sang out over the radio. "Look! The blighters are running away. Four to three, and they won't even take a chance. Of all the blasted scared rabbits I ever saw! Can't help it, Dawson! I've got to settle one of the beggars."
Before Dave could open his mouth, Barker's plane spun around like a top and dropped right down on the tail of one of the Messerschmitts now all diving full out toward the ground below. The leading edges of Barker's guns spurted flame and sound. Tracer smoke cut paths across the air and became lost to view in the fuselage of the Messerschmitt One-Nine. Less than a split second later the German plane shot out crazily to the side as though it had glanced off an invisible guard rail in the heavens. For perhaps fifty feet it slid through the air, then as though by magic the fuselage broke in two right in back of the cockpit.
The two halves of the plane started to fall away from each other. Then smoke and flame belched out of the engine half. In the swirling black smoke Dave saw the figure of the pilot push up out of the cockpit and dive over the side. The German was like a bound up bundle of cloth tumbling down through the air. Then white puffed upward, was caught by the air, and mushroomed out into a parachute envelop.
"Hey! Look out, Jerry!"
The wild cry burst impulsively from Dave's lips, but even though the parachuting Nazi had heard him there was nothing he could have done. One of the other Messerschmitt pilots, apparently rocketing his plane earthward in terror, plowed straight into the parachute silk of his Luftwaffe comrade. The whirling propeller chewed the silk to shreds, and sliced through the tangle of shroud lines like a knife. By a miracle the blades missed the Nazi pilot. But that didn't help him any. His body turned over once in the air, and then fell like a rock straight down.
"One less, poor guy!" Dave grunted and dropped the nose of his own plane. "But I guess that's the kind of a chance you take when you fly with yellow-bellies. Look at them skip for it!"
Dave spat the last out in disgust as the three remaining Messerschmitts continued racing earthward as fast as their whirling props could take them. Not a single German had fired a shot. Freddy, Barker, and he had done all the attacking, and all the shooting. And now the Nazis were diving downward for dear life.
"A break for us, anyway, fellows!" Dave shouted the thought aloud into his flap-mike. "It's more or less what we wanted. Stick with them but don't pick them off too soon. Okay? Got your camera trigger fingers ready."
"Right-o!" came Barker's voice in the earphones.
"And itching!" Freddy chimed in.