"You took part in that air battle yesterday shortly after dawn," he snapped. "How many enemy planes did you engage?"
"Only one, a British Blackburn Skua," the pilot replied instantly. Then, as his face darkened from memory, he added, "I would have shot it down, myself, but I was flying as observer-gunner in one of the Italian planes. The weakling at the controls became scared and ran away."
"Those Italians!" the colonel said, and spat onto the sand. "Not one of them, including their fat dictator, has the courage of a newborn chicken. Bah! I spit on their flag! So there was no other enemy craft?"
"None," the German pilot assured him. "Only the one."
The colonel nodded and turned to the boys again.
"And if you had been lucky enough to return to—to General Wavell's base, as you think that other plane did," he asked softly, "just what would you have reported, eh?"
Dave opened his mouth to let fly with a wise-crack, but Freddy beat him to the punch.
"Your plan of surprise attack, of course," the English youth said quietly. "How you have fifteen motorized units hidden out here on the desert. And how you plan to make the surprise attack on the British garrison at Tobruk just before dawn tomorrow. And how you expect to take Tobruk from the English and thus trap all of the British forces that extend westward to Bengazi and the most advanced outpost at El Aghelia at the southern end of the Gulf of Sidra. Yes, those and a few other details. But it doesn't matter now about us giving the British High Command the information. The other two chaps have informed them, of course."
Had a thousand pound aerial bomb suddenly blown up inside the desert headquarters tent at that moment, no one there could have been more surprised. The German colonel's eyes bulged out, and his jaw dropped down so low it almost struck the top of the table covered with maps. Even Dave caught his breath and stared hard at his pal. The English youth simply smiled and shrugged, and appeared to be enjoying himself immensely. Eventually the German colonel pulled himself together and snorted aloud.
"Very clever, my little swine," he sneered. "For a moment I thought you did know something. But of course you don't. Nor does anybody else, for you two were alone."