Dave's head was roaring and it felt as though in the next second it were going to fly off his shoulders. His heart was a lifeless lump of ice in his chest, and the very air he breathed seemed to burn the walls of his lungs. Just the same he closed his lips tight and stared defiantly back at General von Peiplow. He heard not so much as a murmur from Freddy Farmer. So he knew that his pal was also giving the German the silence treatment.
Von Peiplow glanced first at one, then at the other. After a moment or so he bobbed his head and banged both hands palms down on the desk.
"Very well, then!" he barked and pushed up from his chair. "You wish to be fools, so...."
The Luftwaffe high ranker did not finish the rest. He cut himself off short as there came a sudden mighty bellow of wild alarm from outside. Before the cry had been lost to the echo Dave heard the high keyed whine of something tearing down through the air. Von Peiplow roared a curse, leaped for the door and yanked it open. The terrified face of Colonel Comstadt loomed for an instant in the doorway, then he came lunging inside, almost knocking General von Peiplow off his feet. Dave snapped his eyes out through the door opening just in time to see one of the gliders dive straight into the ground not fifty feet from where he stood. A loud explosion smacked against his eardrums, and the blast almost knocked his feet out from under him. A flash of flame, a spouting cloud of smoke, and then there was a five foot crater where the glider had struck the ground. And there wasn't even a splinter of the glider to be seen.
"Swine fools!" von Peiplow bellowed and shoved Colonel Comstadt to one side, as he leaped toward the door. "Do you want to kill us all? Where is Captain Meuller? Where is...?"
The Luftwaffe general choked off the rest as a white-faced Nazi flying captain came rushing up and practically slid to a stop on the heels of his polished boots.
"Ah, you are safe, Herr General!" he gasped. "Praise be to the gods for that. I have never known such fear as this last moment. I...."
"Shut your mouth, you blabbering imbecile!" von Peiplow thundered at him. Then with a savage gesture of his hand, "What is all this? Who was at the control board?"
"I was, Herr General," the Captain said and wrung his hands. "But something went wrong. The glider would not respond no matter what I did. It went into a dive and I could not right it. Neither could the pilot of the control plane in the air. The power glider went into a dive, and never recovered."
General von Peiplow tilted his head and stared up at the faintly red tinted sky. Unnoticed, Dave and Freddy had walked close to the door. They looked up, too, and saw the Messerschmitt One-Ten that was sliding down out of the air, obviously toward a landing field on the opposite side of the woods.